


Coronado

by Walis



Category: Bleach
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 56,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walis/pseuds/Walis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grimmjow is going to be king, even if it's the last thing he does. Good thing he's got a new secret weapon that he plans to steal right out from under Aizen's nose, whether she wants to come or not. GrimmHime, Las Noches arc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "All Used and Beaten Up"

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by Nine Inch Nails song "We're In This Together", as well as the illustration of the same title by artist Kara-lija on DeviantArt.
> 
> Rated for language and occasional graphic violence.
> 
> Disclaimer: Bleach and all associated places and characters are the creative property of Kubo Tite. I'm just having fun.

Orihime's face throbbed, and her pride stung. She held cool fingers to the swelling under her eye, wishing that her tears would stop soaking her palm.

She had held out for a commendable length of time before the pain and humiliation wrought by the two Hollow girls was too much to withstand. She remained silent throughout the beating and could not even make a noise when Loly delivered a swift kick to her ribs that sent the wind from her lungs and a crack through the bones there.

She would have to heal that.

After the girls had departed, she crumbled to her side in a ball and sobbed silently. She was framed by the light streaming into the dark cell through the still open doorway. The bars over the window had long since witnessed the departure of the forever waning moon into the perpetual night sky.

Orihime sobbed and wondered.

Now, here, in the throes of her pain and self-pity, she could not come up with any purpose or direction.

Forced into a corner, she had selflessly sacrificed her freedom to Ulquiorra at the threat of her loved ones' safety. She could not bear to think, though, that she had served her purpose. Surely her chapter had not ended with her incarceration. Why, after all, did Aizen truly order her detainment? She seriously doubted she was here as a single-woman nurse corps for his army of Arrancar. Orihime recalled Grimmjow's mad laughter with a shudder and curled tighter into herself on the floor. She could almost feel the electric tingle of his oppressive  _reiatsu_.

She missed the tall shadow that the new figure in the doorway cast on her.

Calculating blue eyes narrowed on her defeated form, taking in her torn dress and the hint of blood and bruising peeking through the fingers still covering her shame. His expression was indecipherable.

When Orihime finally pulled her hands from her face, the doorway was empty again, and there was no trace of her fleeting third visitor.

She fell asleep there on the floor.


	2. "I've Become Impossible"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow observes Aizen's newest recruit as his plans write themselves.

She was pretty as sin, but dumb as fuck if you asked him.

The girl stood stock-still with her chin tucked under and her hands folded primly before her. She along with the ten Espada stood before Aizen as he waxed eloquent about some subject Grimmjow was sure he couldn't give two shits about. The Sexta could swear the man just loved to hear himself talk.

His attention was instead focused squarely on the young human in their midst. It was obvious that she was trying her hardest to be unnoticeable. Unfortunately for her, she was a lamb in a den of wolves, the natural – and particularly exquisite – prey of a nest of monsters that sustained themselves on the souls of the living. And every Hollow in that room could smell how especially sumptuous a soul their guest had. She was divine.

He watched as she fidgeted under the stares of half the room. Their loyalty to Aizen did not necessarily cancel out the Espadas' savage nature, and most of them did not have the tact or the reasoning to hide their interest in the girl. Ulquiorra, stone-faced as always, was the only one wholly focused on the Shinigami leader, and Halibel stared blankly at a spot on the wall over his shoulder. They were the only two not leering at the human girl in some way.

Her look of sheer distress was amusing on a certain level.

What Grimmjow did not notice, however, was any sign of the physically crippled girl he had seen last night.

Her face showed no evidence of the cuts or bruising she had been trying to hide from her empty room the previous evening. Her dress was white and pristine, and her countenance was composed, though perhaps a little uneasy in the presence of so many monsters.

He wondered if her healing powers could take away her memories or if she just had a stronger backbone than he'd originally credited her with.

He watched as she continued to fidget to Aizen's incessant droning. Grimmjow thought fleetingly that he should probably be listening to what was being said, otherwise he would end up leaving the meeting with just as little information as he had come with.

How would he ever overthrow Aizen if he didn't even know what the Shinigami's plan was? He needed to pay attention.

Despite the defeat of his little legion of loyal _Fracción_ in the world of the living, his ambition to rule Hueco Mundo as its king had not lessened. If anything, their sacrifices strengthened his resolve.

They might have been destroyed, but after he'd eaten of them decades ago, they would live on in him forever. Their goals constantly whispered in the clatter of voices in his head. They screamed, growled, lilted, sang, cried, and chanted, and it was a testament to his composure that he was not driven to complete madness by the voices of all the souls he had consumed in his undead life.  He sometimes even thought the tiny voice of reason that occasionally spoke up in his head sounded suspiciously like Shawlong.  He wiped away the shadow of nostalgia that threatened to spread to his face.

The Sexta Espada’s brow furrowed. His goal remained, then, that he would be king. After Aizen's demise, he would ensure that Old Man Barragan was out of the picture. Starrk might be Primera, but ambition was certainly not in his character. Grimmjow felt he posed little threat for when the time actually came to take action.

The question remained, though, as to when that time would come.

After a century of scheming, the Shinigami had finally revealed his hand to his once-allies in the Seireitei. His master plan had finally been set into motion, and Grimmjow knew now was the time to examine all the parts of Aizen's intricate maneuver as they unfolded.

He was certain this girl was a wild card, though.

She was probably still in her teens, if he were to evaluate her based on appearance alone. It had been centuries since he himself had aged, though, so he might have been a poor judge of that.

This girl, he thought to himself, must have some sort of unspeakable power or at least an incredible untapped potential for Aizen, meticulous as he was, to willingly risk derailing his plans by kidnapping her.

She had already demonstrated a penchant for witchcraft, he thought as his left arm tingled with the phantom sensation of loss. His fingers curled at his side, flexing into a fist before relaxing again, over and over.

He knew now, as he watched her try to pay attention to Aizen’s subtle intricacies and double entendres, that she was so in over her head. She was alone in this world of suffering and war and savagery – this _purgatory_ – and she would find no allies here.

Opportunistic predators were successful predators, he reminded himself as he observed her and simultaneously dissected Aizen's strategies. Grimmjow was a top predator as well.

He watched as she slowly began losing some of her poise and composure, certain she could feel the hungry stares of the Espada surrounding her. She fidgeted absently, twiddling her fingers as she clasped them in front of her. She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip, and he was intent on learning her body language and using that to his advantage.

She was, after all, here against her will. Grimmjow hoped this fact could potentially be used to sway her to his cause, and Aizen could experience the shock of his plans coming unraveled from within his own organization.

Yes, Grimmjow liked the sound of that in his head. This pretty little girl could be just the break he was looking for in his plot to overthrow Aizen.

As if she knew the extent of his attention, he watched as the girl's eyes fluttered up from the floor around her feet. They scanned around for a moment until her shocked expression met his own and locked. Grimmjow thrived on the deer-in-the-headlights look she gave him and delivered a menacing full-toothed grin, letting her know that she was the focus of his attentions. He almost laughed aloud as she first blanched entirely then turned scarlet. Her eyes shot back to the floor before her, unwilling to acknowledge the Hollow's stare again. She wished the floor could just swallow her whole.

Yes, Grimmjow thought to himself, this would not be hard at all.

Grimmjow was first and foremost a predator, after all, and Orihime was prey ripe for the hunt.


	3. "Fate as it Flows"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orihime wanders. Grimmjow smashes faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He is BACK and I cannot contain my glee. Kubo Tite finally realized the best way to draw in his fanbase once again was to finally stop jerking us around and just SHOW him.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to all the other raging Grimmjow fans out there! Our exceptional patience has paid off!

Sometimes Ulquiorra let her out to wander.

It was less a form of consideration than it was mild neglect on his part, but she was not one to waste opportunity. She was not extremely docile by nature, and her cell drove her stir-crazy quickly and often.

She'd never been to this part of the compound before, she noted as her boot heels clicked slowly across the off-white floor.

Orihime found herself in a long, wide corridor. It was evidently some sort of passageway, judging by the breadth of the hall, but any doors she'd passed so far were shut firmly. How boring.

She continued on for a while, intent on at least reaching the end of the mystery hallway before turning back toward what she already knew was more dull whiteness. There was little to stimulate her mind in this place. A small, stupid part of her even wished she would run into one of the locals, fleetingly thinking an encounter would be more interesting than all this emptiness. She squashed that thought as soon as it crossed her mind, though. No run-in in this hell could possibly end well for her.

Minutes later, she started noticing faint noises.

They were familiar, Orihime realized as she tried to place them. She heard them often whenever she would visit Tatsuki at practice or cheer her on at a tournament. Grunts of exertion and indecipherable conversation filtered to her ears as she neared the source of the sounds.

Someone was sparring.

She realized the endless hallway was opening up to her right, and she slowed as she neared it. The noises were louder now and completely unmistakable. The occasional laugh or casual taunt reinforced the feeling she had that this was just practice. She could hear the sound of flesh striking flesh and the dance of evading feet clearly now.

Discreetly poking half her face around the corner, she took a careful first scope of the scene with her left eye, holding her bright hair back else it give away her presence.

She was right. The doorway opened up to a mezzanine, the staircase to the left leading down to a large open space one floor down that reminded her of a dojo. She looked past the railing and at the two fighters below.

One was a shorter man, stocky, quick to react, and compactly built. Orihime thought he looked vaguely Hispanic. He was strong, she could tell, but evidently very overmatched by his partner judging by his extremely frustrated expression.

It was his opponent that made Orihime's eyes widen in shock.

Taller than the first Arrancar by a head, his challenger had barely broken a sweat behind his confident, taunting grin. She recognized that smile and the blue hair above it well, by now.

"Stop leaving your left quarter so uncovered," she heard him correct his sparring partner. His deep voice rang clearly in the medium-sized space. The shorter man grit his teeth and tried to comply.

Grimmjow's chest and arms were covered with a light sheen of perspiration that glistened through the dusting of hair there. It was hard to tell in this light, but Orihime thought it might match the blue atop his head.  _Strange_ , she thought. Then, before she could stop her mind,  _I guess the curtains match the carpet_. She blushed at herself and mentally cursed her schoolmate Chizuru for ever saying something so lewd around her.

He had removed his shirt for the match, and she spotted it rolled up in a ball at the side of the little arena. His broad back showed the impressive lines of his musculature as he blocked his opponent's strikes, clearly not extremely affected but not trying to be patronizing. He was instructing, Orihime realized. She never would have pegged him to have that in his character, she mused. He was suddenly much more interesting than the animal she'd written him off as before.

 _Especially_  with his shirt off.

She felt a slow blush crawl up her cheeks as she was vaguely mesmerized by the purposeful movements of his physique. This was not the body of a teenager, she thought to herself as she compared him to many of her friends. There was a massive scar that started at his left collarbone and made its way across his chest, down and over like a pageant sash, she mused. He almost seemed to wear it as proudly as if it was one. She wondered where he might have gotten it from, and why he hadn't asked her to heal it along with his other injuries. She could not truly understand the mentality behind using scars as badges or reminders. She was not a fighter at heart, after all.

The Sexta Espada's current opponent let out a furious volley of strikes, clearly frustrated at his inability to match his superior. With a yell, he aimed a final, powerful punch at Grimmjow's head. Orihime gasped slightly before she managed to further stifle the noise.

The taller man caught the brash attack effortlessly, his expression closed and serious in stark contrast to the grin he wore earlier. He lowered his opponent's fist wrapped securely in his own grip as he frowned down at the shorter man. He remained silent, waiting.

"Let me be your  _Fracción_ , Grimmjow-sama," Orihime heard him plead. Her hand remained sealed over her mouth as she listened with bated breath. This was much more personal an encounter than she ever expected to see the violent Espada in. She awaited his reaction.

"You are powerful, and continue to grow more so with time. Everyone can see it. It's why that disgusting Shinigami cut off your arm; we all know it. And I know I can grow more powerful under your guidance and leadership." His logical argument was laced with earnest; he'd clearly wanted to be a part of the Sexta's team for a long time. Grimmjow's eyes narrowed.

"There are other Espada whose ranks you could join. Stronger ones." Grimmjow was deadpan. The smaller man shifted uneasily, aware of the fact that he was about to speak out of turn.

"Barragan-sama is an overlord. His  _Fracción_ follow him for fear and greed, not loyalty. You... You're a commander. A general. Your troops followed you because they believed in your cause, in your strength, and in your ambition. I would be immensely proud to be the first in the restoration of your army."

Grimmjow had long since let go of his opponent's fist, looking down at the shorter man with an unreadable expression. Orihime noticed, however, that it wasn't particularly pleased. She wondered at that. Shouldn't he be happy that someone thought so highly of him and wanted to join his forces? This interaction was painting so many new layers to the mystery that was Grimmjow. She was enthralled; it was better than a movie.

The smaller Arrancar piped in yet again. "I won't be so weak as your former legion, I assure you of that, Grimmjow-sama," he said, trying to bolster his argument.

It was the wrong thing to say.

Orihime barely held in a shriek of surprise as Grimmjow's fist flew out and connected with the other Hollow's face, the crack of bones resonating through the small chamber as he flew backward and crashed into the wall behind him. The force of the blow blew him straight into the stone, where he was left embedded and crumpled. His face was gruesome and unrecognizable, covered in gore. Orihime held back bile.

Grimmjow's expression was stoic as he wiped his fist on his pants. He calmly walked back to the edge of the room, retrieving his jacket. By the time Orihime realized he intended on walking out, it was far too late for her to run anywhere. There was nowhere for her to hide. Indescribable fear clenched her gut as she ducked back behind the wall, holding her breath and bracing herself for what was to come.

Her eyes were squeezed shut tightly as she listened to his unhurried footsteps near the entryway. Her heart raced in her throat, and she wondered if she was going to die here.

The footsteps came to a stop next to her. When nothing happened for a few moments, she dared to open her eyes, only to see the blue-haired Espada standing tall next to her, paying no attention to the girl as he casually shrugged his jacket back on. Her eyes were enormous in her face, filled with fear, trepidation, and disgust at what she had just seen.

As he adjusted his jacket on his frame, she heard his deep baritone wash over her.

"Fix him."

Then, he walked away, never looking at her once.

She scrambled to comply, rushing to the crumpled form lodged in the wall of the practice hall. As the warm glow of her Shun Shun Rikka enveloped the nearly dead Arrancar, Orihime resolved to never wander this hallway again.


	4. "You and Me"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A deal is struck.

Orihime often wondered how she found herself in these positions.

At first, she thought it was coincidence, running into the tall Espada so many times throughout her short stay here in Las Noches. Perhaps she was seeing him just as often as any other Arrancar; it was just his bright hair and capricious personality that stuck out in her memory so well.

Then, one day, she found him outside her room.

Orihime's cell was at the end of a narrow corridor, white like the rest of the building and empty of any other rooms. It was how the two Hollow girls cornered her so easily; she had nowhere to run.

She shuddered at the painful memory.

She had not seen the girls again since that last incident, and it was only that thought that made her somewhat grateful that it was Grimmjow at her door right now.

"Um... Can I help you?"

He was slouching, hands in his pockets as he casually avoided eye contact. Orihime hid herself halfway behind the ajar door, instinct telling her not to reveal herself completely to the predator before her.

It helped little, for without a word and with hardly an effort Grimmjow strolled past her and made his way into the room. Orihime's nerves began fraying as she backed up, unable to overcome the Espada's firm push at the door as he easily shouldered his way in.

She stood near the doorway in choked silence as the man, blasé as ever, made a slow circle around her spartan quarters. His gaze passed over the sofa-like sleeping surface, her chamber pot in the far corner, and finally rested on the bars covering her window, a sliver of perpetual moonlight filtering through. Orihime wrung her fingers and fidgeted, then jumped when he suddenly spoke.

"I still owe you for my arm," he said simply, his low baritone filling the small space. It was loud in the otherwise perfectly silent room. Orihime froze, then blinked once, slowly. She answered after a moment.

"It... It was nothing, really."

Grimmjow turned from the window to finally face the girl, a sneer raising the side of his upper lip opposite his jawbone fragment. Orihime saw a flash of straight white teeth.

"Bullshit. You did that for me, now I owe you something in return. That's how this works, sweetheart," he said condescendingly as he shifted his footing.

Orihime's mouth was dry as she thought of what to say to that. What was he implying? She had no illusions about this place or its inhabitants; certainly he was not  _actually_  simply here to repay a debt. Her voice trembled as she asked a question, her mouth taking off before her brain could catch up. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

Orihime felt a flush pass over her cheeks as his sneer was replaced with the flash of a smirk, the corners of his lips twitching and his eyes glittering in response to her wording. She had seen enough movies in her lifetime to know how suggestive that statement could be between a man and a woman in a space like this. She mentally chastised herself, but stood tall nevertheless as she awaited his response.

The man before her was tall and handsome and _terrifying_ , she reminded herself firmly as she forced the recall of gruesome memories.  There was little she could do to forget the vision of his newly restored hand _going through_ that one former Espada’s stomach like he was nothing more than a pile of laundry. He may not have been forcing her to the ground with violence like Loly and Menoly had, but she was not about to let her guard down for a moment just because he hadn’t done something terrible to her yet.

His slight mirth disappeared quickly as he turned to face her fully, a dark and scrutinizing look covering his face as he considered the girl before him. Grimmjow had not neared much, but Orihime felt as if he was towering over her. She felt inches tall as she played with the ends of her long auburn hair, suddenly unable to meet his intense gaze. It was very awkward.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her abruptly.

Orihime was confused. Her eyes darted to his of their own volition before they retreated back down to the floor. "Eh?" That was the question  _she_  was supposed to ask  _him_. "This... This is my room..."

The Espada scoffed at her response and impatiently reworded his question. " _Here_ , as in Las Noches. Hueco Mundo." One hand slipped out of his pocket to gesture with a wave all around them. "Why the hell are you here?"

Orihime was at a total loss. Didn't Aizen explain the answer to that question to all his Espada the day she arrived and healed Grimmjow's arm? She suddenly questioned his mental capacity.

"Aizen had me brought here. Don't you remember?" she added tentatively, wondering how fragile his faculties were.

Grimmjow rolled his eyes, and she could _feel_ the irritation rolling off of him in waves. Did she answer incorrectly? "To hell with  _his_  reasons," he clarified. Orihime frowned. "What are  _your_ _s_?" he hissed.

She did not understand at all.

"Grimmjow," she said, testing his name carefully on her tongue, "Ulquiorra kidnapped me under Aizen's orders," she explained slowly. "I don't have a choice in this whole matter."

The silence that followed was heavy. The man's eyes narrowed, and she felt the weight of his judgment. Her skin tingled with an embarrassment akin to shame; she wondered how he could possibly have the right to make her feel such pressure. He spoke lowly next, his words like spears through her heart planting the first seeds of doubt.

"You're full of shit, aren't you?" Orihime squashed the initial bubble of affront and indignation that festered immediately upon his accusation. Who did this man think he was?

"What do you mean?" she asked tentatively, confused beyond a doubt.

He took a short step toward her as he began speaking again, slowly closing the distance between them and sending Orihime's survival instincts in a scramble for purchase.

"You have no plan for escape, do you? I'll bet the thought hasn't even crossed your mind." Orihime jarred at the accusation.

He was right.

"You're just sitting here in your little cell, wandering around this compound during your 'daytime' hours like a pretty little ghost,  _waiting_  for someone to come rescue you." She was about to offer a retort, but was cut short. "And don't tell me you're not waiting for rescue. Are you really so pathetic that you would just let yourself be used against your own friends by the very villain behind every major mess you dumbfucks have gotten yourselves into?"

Her mouth snapped shut at that. Again, he was right.

Initially, she had left with Ulquiorra to save her friends from the rock and the hard place that the Fourth Espada had placed her in. She had witnessed - and painfully felt - the overwhelming brutality that the nihilistic Arrancar commanded, and she knew her friends were unprepared for the threat he posed.

Now, though, she was reminded of the purposelessness she felt following the beating she received at the hands of the two Arrancar girls. What was she doing here? How was she helping her friends anymore? Ulquiorra loved reminding her during his daily visits just how futile everything was. It made the meals he delivered particularly difficult to swallow.

The answer was, she wasn't.

Her bottom lip trembled, but she refused to let the blue-haired Hollow before her witness the extent of her distress. Then she felt her indignation from earlier resurface at the Espada. She spoke quietly, voice hardly above a whisper as she looked down at his feet and hugged herself.

"Is this how you're thinking to repay me for your arm? By reminding me how useless I am to my friends?" She struggled not to cry, her personal fears and failures finally brought up by another person for the first time and given the credence she always avoided. "I already know how weak I am, Grimmjow. If I was strong, I wouldn't have been kidnapped in the first place. I could have fought back and protected my friends without becoming the liability that I am now."

Her roiling emotions stirred with her spoken admission. Saying it aloud made it so much worse. She was shocked, then, when his laughter rumbled through the room.

"You really are a dumb twit, aren't you?" She looked up at him in shock, meeting his electric blue gaze and humorless smile. "Do I really have to spell this out for you?"

Orihime was confused.

"I know he showed you the Hougyoku."

 _Ah_.

She didn't answer his statement, unsure if he truly knew or if he was baiting the answer out if her. Was he perhaps spying for Aizen? She highly doubted it, but stranger things had happened in this awful place.

He went on, uncaring that she did not readily admit to his accusation.

"If it were to be destroyed, he would lose all influence in this world."

The statement by Grimmjow was followed by more silence.

Orihime's eyes were wide in shock. Grimmjow's revelation was no different than what she'd suspected when she laid eyes upon the powerful device days ago in Aizen's chambers. To hear one of his minions outright tell her this, though, was astonishing. What was going on here?

"What are you trying to get at?" she asked suspiciously. She watched as Grimmjow looked down his nose at her, blue eyes glowing strangely in the faint light of her dark room as he sucked his teeth silently behind his closed lips. She imagined he would be the type of man to always have a toothpick in his mouth were he of the living. Maybe he’d even use it to pick at the teeth in his mask?

Orihime shook her head furiously at the momentary distraction. This Arrancar clearly had an agenda, and that warranted her undivided attention.

"Aizen doesn't belong here," he spoke up suddenly. Orihime was dumbstruck by the admission. "Hollows were never meant to be at the beck and call of a Shinigami. It's just unnatural."

Her pulse raced.

"He has no place here, and he has no place on my throne."

Orihime started to interject, somewhat dazed by these rolling admissions. "Your...?" she began, wondering since when Grimmjow felt Aizen was a usurper and how many other Hollows might be in agreement.

" _My_  throne," he growled in response, closing in on the girl before him. She flinched as his face neared, inches from her throat as she cringed away and scrunched her eyes shut. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the door behind her.  His next words whispered coolly over her ear, sending shivers up and down her spine.

"That  _bastard_  is sitting on what was to be  _my_  throne, and I want it to end.

"And you. You want to save your friends, don't you?" Orihime's eyes shot open. Reactively, she turned to face him with wide eyes, and her cheek accidentally brushed against his thanks to his extreme proximity. He smelled clean. He backed away only far enough to leave a negligible space between their noses, but he continued to keep his volume low.

"They will come to try to rescue you, you know. And when they do, they will fail. They will fall like flies to Aizen's army, because they don't have the mettle it takes to survive the brutality that lies ahead of them." She would have slapped him, but he continued immediately. "Don't you want to do something about that?"

Orihime gaped, waiting for the answer that she knew was forthcoming, regardless of her response.  His eyes bore into her own, and she could not look away.

"In battle, your advantage increases exponentially when you can mount your attack from multiple fronts. If Aizen is distracted by the army he knows is coming, then we suddenly have the element of surprise when we destroy the source of his power from the inside."

The tactics seemed sound enough, but the whole scenario was making her head spin.

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

His eyes grew unreadable as he slowly backed out of her personal boundaries.

"The enemy of my enemy may still be my enemy, but you are definitely the lesser of two evils. That, and I can destroy you in a heartbeat if this doesn't work. That Shinigami bastard has proven a little harder for me to take care of, hence the reason we are here to begin with."

He was positively chatty tonight.

"So," she began tentatively in an effort at clarification. She needed to speak up before this conversation got completely out of her control. She feared it may be too late for that, anyway. "You want me to destroy the Hougyoku to help you overcome Aizen somehow," she simplified. "How am I supposed to do that?"

Grimmjow raised his hand to his face and scratched at his jaw with a single finger. "Think about it, chick. As much as you're making me believe it right now, I  _know_  you're not stupid." Orihime pouted, her feathers ruffled.

"I can reject it, sure, maybe. But how could we ever get to that point?" Grimmjow made a low noise, and the young woman realized that he was nearing the end of his patience. It was almost animalistic.

"Are you in on this, or do I have to kill you for knowing too much?" he asked impatiently. Orihime gulped.

"I- I think I'm on the same page, it's just that... This is a lot to take in right now," she looked up at him imploringly. "Up until fifteen minutes ago, you were just another one of  _them_. I'm... I'm still having trouble absorbing that this is coming out of  _your_  mouth right now." He outright growled at her this time and took a menacing step forward again.

"I am  _nothing_  like them, and you remember that, you little bitch," he said with an unexpected fire. She was a taken aback at his change in tone and shrunk in fear.

She took a moment to examine him wholly. His posture was rigid. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the veins in his forearms were popping out with a tension she hadn't noticed at first. His feet were spread shoulder width apart beneath the billows of his  _hakama_ , his black boots peeking out from underneath. His teeth were clenched, and his brow had crashed down in an epic furrow.

Suddenly, Orihime did not mistrust him as much as before.

"I'll help you," she said breathlessly.

Grimmjow's frown lessened just a fraction as he studied her face closely. The corners of his mouth had eased from their fierce downward turn as his eyes seemed to bare her very soul. Seconds passed. He nodded once firmly as he came to his conclusion.

"Good."

Then he angled himself with a pivot of his foot and walked out the door, leaving Orihime to wonder what new devil she had just made a deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading so far!


	5. Head Like a Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orihime is terrible at this.

Orihime was never very good at keeping secrets.

Every time Aizen called his core component in for a meeting, her gaze would involuntarily flicker to the tall, disinterested Sexta Espada. While never blatantly ignoring the proceedings, even his surprisingly superb military bearing could not conceal his annoyance at every one of these assemblies. Orihime hoped she could use his subtle theatricality as an excuse if she was ever caught staring.

To her distress, she had to enact her plan sooner than she ever thought.

"What is your interest in the Sixth Espada, Orihime Inoue?" Formal as ever, Ulquiorra Schiffer asked her the question bluntly one day as he brought her meal. The girl being questioned fumbled her response.

"Eh? Ah, um…" She struggled to deliver her planned answer. "You see, he, uh…" The Cuatro's unchanging expression further derailed her ability to speak as she felt the pressure of his shockingly emerald gaze. His eyes would be  _pretty_  if they weren't so expressionless all the time.  _Spinach? No, they're not_ that _green. Lettuce! Maybe. Booger?_

_Heh-heh._

"Orihime."

With a start, she was shocked from her musings. She tried to answer. "You see, he's always, um. He never pays attention, and, uh. I don't think he likes… erm." Ulquiorra was evidently unamused. As Orihime struggled to answer, a thought occurred to her with a randomness that often delighted her friends back home.

"You know, I can always see where his Hollow hole is, but I've never seen yours. Where is your hole?"

If the Cuatro was any less emotionless, he might have been mortified at her wording on her behalf. As it stood, though, he merely pursed his lips. "That has nothing to do with the question I have asked you," he stated. Orihime pouted, the childish expression unusual in the presence of this stoic Espada whose unshaking composure she usually tried to emulate.

"Yeah, well, I'm curious. It's not anywhere  _embarrassing,_ is it?" she asked with a conspiratorial whisper. Then, "And how do you wash your hair? Does that helmet thingie come off?"

This girl was such a terrible curiosity for him. Every day, he tested the limits of her psyche with his conversations. One evening, he would have her near tears with utter hopelessness. The next morning, though, the emotion will have been washed from her face, and she would ask him such childish, inane, imagination-driven questions such as these.

The Fourth hated to admit how much it intrigued him.

Exasperated with her line of questioning, Ulquiorra stared at her for a moment longer before turning on his heel and abandoning her to her meal. He did not see her again until the next day.

Orihime chalked it up to a victory.

Later that evening, Grimmjow stormed into her room while she was lying on her back in the middle of the floor, counting ceiling tiles in her boredom.

"What the hell did you tell that fucker today?" he demanded, worry lining his face.

Orihime shot upright in surprise, slightly intimidated by his rage and confused by his insinuation. She didn't give up any information!

"I asked him where his hole was!" she squeaked, the response spilling from her lips before she could think. Her verbal filters did not work so well under pressure.

Grimmjow stood there, momentarily dazed by her answer. She thought the look on his face was actually  _adorable_  if it wasn't for the fact that he could render her limbless in the blink of an eye.

He did not stick around much longer, though. Orihime could not help the tiny incredulous smile that came to her face at the memory of his roaring laughter as he walked back out her door.

It seemed her reluctant ally had a better sense of humor than her babysitter. His laugh was different when it wasn't in the heat of battle or destruction, she mused.

Her lips stayed slightly upturned as she picked up counting ceiling tiles where she left off.


	6. Rebel Yell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow learns a bit about Orihime. Orihime holds her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orihime is such a whimsical character, and she lends herself wonderfully to that trait so particular to Shonen manga and anime - Bleach being no exception - that allows for comedic relief of tension. I feel like it's actually a wonderful way to build up a character's personality; even if the weight of the world is on her shoulders, she lets her imagination run away with itself, sometimes to the point of distraction. The world must come back into play for her like a scratching record or screeching tires quite often. I'm sure even Grimmjow must have some inane musings of his own every once in a while, internalized though they might be. He's far from without personality, and is actually quite expressive for a villain in this series.
> 
> Anyway, I'm just aimlessly justifying Orihime's occasional "Squirrel!" moments in this fic. Heh. "Occasional."

Grimmjow would find her in the strangest places.

He knew that she had trouble being cooped up in her cell; he would sense her  _reiatsu_  in all manner of locations throughout the compound of Las Noches.  _How_ she came across some of these obscure places was a question for someone with a more vivid imagination than his own.

It made for excellent covert meetings, though.

The rumble of beasts in the subterranean waste disposal facility echoed eerily off the dark walls, the plip-plop of condensation dripping off every surface and adding to the ambiance. It was no surprise that in the diverse array of Hollows of this world, there existed ones whose sole purpose it was to eat trash. A use for everyone, Grimmjow mused.

The girl before him was staring up wide-eyed at the vast, cavernous space, one hand covering her nose and mouth as she attempted to balance her curiosity with her gag reflex. The stench was atrocious, but Grimmjow had more control than to show how it affected him.

"How the hell do you find these places?" he asked her, judgment lacing his tone and echoing off the walls.

"How do you always manage to find me?" she countered, voice muffled by her hand. Grimmjow sneered.

"You're about as discreet as a rhinoceros, Princess. Anyone could hear you stomping around from a mile away." Ignoring the nickname, Orihime pouted at the accusation. Was he insinuating that she was fat? What a jerk.

"I didn't realize Hollows could make such a mess," she postulated as she turned in a slow circle, meandering deeper into the cavern filled with trash and waste. Her head snapped up towards a rumbling bellow she heard somewhere further into the catacombs of sewage. There was more than one monster in here. Grimmjow said nothing to her comment and merely watched her, arms crossed and expression unreadable. "Or is this from the Shinigami that live here?" she asked observantly, turning to face him as she asked the question.

Again, he ignored her.

"The Soul Society abandoned you. They've ordered your friends not to go after you," he updated her bluntly. Her saddened – but unsurprised – reaction meant that Ulquiorra had already told her.

"I know," she said softly, confirming his suspicions. Her hand still stung from where she had slapped the Fourth, and a tumult of emotions stirred to life beneath the surface. Uninterested in that particular reaction, though, he did not let her linger on this for long.

"They'll come for you, regardless." Her head popped up at this, her eyes looking at Grimmjow strangely. She was silent for a moment as she weighed something, never once letting her expression leave the Espada before her.

"Why do you think that?" she asked finally.

Grimmjow again decided not to answer. "We need to be prepared for when they enter Hueco Mundo. That is when Aizen will be most distracted, and when we will be able to mount our opposition from the inside. If we wait until then to start preparing, though, it will be too late." He made sense, she thought. She nodded slowly in moderate understanding, prompting him to continue. "I need you to tell me how long you think it will take for you to destroy the Hougyoku once I get you in."

Orihime blinked owlishly. That was… direct. "Uh… I have no idea," she answered.

Grimmjow's eyes narrowed, the only outward sign of his growing worry. "How well _do_ you understand your own powers?" he asked, deep voice rumbling in the echoing sewer. He refrained from allowing his unease to bleed into the question, but he felt a cold lump settle at the bottom of his stomach.

Orihime merely shook her head, unable to answer the question as she looked up at him with helpless eyes. He gave a long exhale and gazed off down a long, damp corridor.

"Brilliant," he grumbled, staring intently at the puddles around them as he thought hard. Orihime was fascinated by the look of intense concentration on his face. He was a more precise tactician than she ever would have expected based on first appearances. She wondered if he spent his free time playing strategy games. A mental image of Grimmjow challenging Ulquiorra at a chess board fluttered into her mind. The Fourth Espada stared quietly, green eyes expressionless and frightening, while Grimmjow's blue ones were narrowed in cold calculation. Her imagination gave Grimmjow a burning cigarette to rest on his lips. Fedoras appeared on both their heads.

He spoke again, and her mental scenario ended with the imaginary Sexta flipping the chessboard in a rage.

The Espada was looking down at his left arm as he spoke to her next, clenching his hand into a fist then loosening it again, over and over. "You did this in mere moments," he told her, referring to the restoration of his dispatched limb, "from absolutely nothing. I've never seen anything like it before." He glanced up at her from under his furrowed brows with what she could only describe as a look of distrust. "I'll bet you don't even know the limits of your own powers." Her silence reflected the speculation she'd often heard from friends and allies. Having never been a particularly power-hungry person, she never tended to test those so-called limits. Training with Hacchi the Visored gave her a greater understanding of her capabilities, but she was still very ignorant as to the boundaries of her particular magic.

'Magic,' because even Hollows and Shinigami alike found her powers unusual. She felt like a freak, sometimes.

"I can't attack very well," she started, much to Grimmjow's surprise. "In fact, the last time I tried to use Tsubaki, one of you destroyed him," she explained, remembering the horrible encounter with Yammi. "My shield is pretty strong, but someone once explained to me that my powers are only as strong as my resolve. That's why I can heal and reject past events so well. I'm always determined to make things better." That was what Hacchi told her once as they recovered between training bouts. It was the day after Tsubaki had been restored, and the tiny volatile fairy had not fared well under her tears and smothering.

"Who the fuck is 'Tsubaki'?"

For the second time that visit, Orihime blinked largely. Grimmjow, like most people, she realized, had never truly "seen" the true form her powers took. Suddenly taken with a new idea, she bit back a grin before she summoned her Shun Shun Rikka, ready to introduce them to the unprepared Hollow. He exclaimed with a bit-off curse of surprise as they made their appearance.

Lights burst from her hair clips like flower petals on gunpowder. Bright and sparkling, the six points of power spun around their master like fireworks, swirling playfully and chasing away the clawing shadows of the underground world they were in. The Sexta's surprised eyes darted around at each of them as they zipped past his head, looking like a cat chasing a laser pointer. One tiny golden fireball screeched to a halt before his face.

It started speaking.

"I'm Tsubaki, asswipe," the little glowing light said, voice surprisingly full coming from such a small source. "What's with that look? Did your shitty dye job seep into your brain?"

Grimmjow's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Ohh, big man's mad now!" the light taunted.

The Espada's large hand shot out and wrapped around the ball of light, no longer worried that it would burn him. The Hollow's eyes widened in slight astonishment when the glowing dust vanished to reveal a tiny man in a black jumpsuit clutched in his fist. The little man struggled in his grip. "Let go, you fat ape!" Grimmjow just continued to observe the fairy as it flailed in his grasp, fascinated.

"Your powers… are fairies?" he asked with some wonder. The other five lights stopped near him now, surrounding him in a half-circle and extinguishing their glow. He looked at each one in turn, noting the diversity of the tiny group.

"Mm-hmm! This is the form my powers manifested themselves in. Cool, huh?" Orihime said proudly. On the inside, though, she secretly worried about what Grimmjow would think. His dangerous grip on her already once-destroyed assault fairy did not help matters. Grimmjow looked from the last of the small floating persons back to the one writhing uncontrollably in his hand.

"'Cool' wasn't the first word that came to mind- Ow!" His hand opened when the tiny bandana covering Tsubaki's face lowered so the fairy could bite him. The offensive-powered creature flew in an angry circle around the Espada, then landed on Orihime's shoulder possessively.

"Yeah, coming from the guy with a Billy Idol complex. The Eighties are over, Fashion King," he insulted. The insinuation was not lost on Grimmjow although the reference flew over his head, so he merely growled.

"Come closer and say that again, pipsqueak," he threatened.

Then, the rest of the fairies descended on him.

"A Hollow that's not trying to destroy us! How fascinating!" said the energetic mad-scientist looking one. The large brawny one just kept staring at him with a dumb look. His mechanical lower jaw reminded Grimmjow a little of Yammi.

"His… his hair is blue!" said a shy fairy, draped in a tiny cloak that swallowed her form.

An athletic looking female whizzed past his ear, closer to his face than his comfort levels permitted. "And despite that, he's kind of a cutie!" She had pink hair, so the Espada felt it was unfair of her to judge.

An exasperated blonde male with a ponytail pushed her aside, taking charge of the situation.

"Honestly. At this rate he's going to think we're all imbeciles. Let's not lump ourselves with Tsubaki, hmm?"

Angry words of protest came from the fairy on Orihime's shoulder, and the Sexta's thoughts spun. This absentminded little girl had a surprisingly complex power, he realized. While most Shinigami had a _Zanpakuto_  with a single personality, hers manifested into  _six_  separate beings, each one more different than the next. He would never again underestimate what madness was taking place in her mind, he figured silently as their chatter punctuated his thoughts. The poor girl looked like she was trying to break up an argument between Tsubaki and the blonde one.

"Okay, I get it. You've got the gayest power in all the universe," he said in a bored tone. He knew he struck his mark when Orihime visibly deflated. Five of the fairies vanished in a burst of glowing dust, while Tsubaki launched himself from her shoulder to face him again. He stopped, inches from the Espada's face.

"If you hurt her, I'll fly so far up your ass that you'll  _taste_  my boots on your tongue," he hissed before vanishing like his siblings.

Grimmjow let the threat roll off of him, unworried. He found it amusing, quite honestly.

"They're… they're little bits of me. Projected into an outward manifestation. That's what I've been told, at least," she explained in a tiny voice.

Grimmjow decided to add to her mortification.

"Little bits of you, huh?" he questioned casually. Orihime heard the hint of mirth in his voice before he spoke again, and she braced herself. "Tell your subconscious that being 'kind of a cutie' is the worst insult I've received in years. I'm a motherfucking dreamboat," he said with a sneer on his upper lip.

He chuckled lowly at her burning face and blubbering response.

"I'll think on this whole thing for a bit," he said seriously, hands in his pockets as he started to walk away. "Your power's stupid," he lied, "but I still think it's our trump card.” He prepared to make an exit, tossing his final words over his shoulder at the young woman.

"I'll find you again another day. In the meantime, practice," he ordered.

He stopped in his tracks when Orihime squeaked a request. Unable to hear her, he turned slightly so he could regard her more fully. "What?"

She twirled a lock of her auburn hair in her hands awkwardly as she looked at the slimy ground, meekly asking her question again.

"I… don't think I know how to get out of here," she said, embarrassed. "Can you help me?"

One of Grimmjow's eyebrows rose in exasperation. Before turning back around to continue out, he sighed loudly, then walked more slowly than he'd originally intended.

He did not turn again to see if she was following. The sound of her boots scampering on the stone beneath her feet was all the indication he needed.


	7. "We're in this Together Now" part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will be presented in two parts.

Orihime practiced, just like Grimmjow told her to. Unfortunately, she never imagined she would have such little time to improve.

Days later, she realized that something had gone very wrong.

"We need to get out of here," he said with finality, moments after he’d appeared in her room unannounced. She could detect the urgency in his tone and worried.

"Wh... What? But I thought..."

He cut her off before she could finish. "Plan changed. We're leaving. Now."

Orihime felt sick to her stomach. Their plan for escape was already going to be difficult to pull off as it was, but this new derailment sounded like a recipe for disaster. What could have possibly changed to cause Grimmjow to make such an impulsive decision?

"I'll get my stuff, I guess," she trailed off, ready to turn back into her room and hurriedly grab some essentials she'd packed in a knapsack he had found for her a few days ago. He looked back over his shoulder and down the hallway as he replied.

"Take whatever you've already got. We're out of time." She hurried doubly at his words, panic settling in. His look was intense, eyes sharp and nervous. He looked back at her and pinned the girl with a gaze like a wild predator. She gulped.

They were going to do this.

Orihime had never harbored hopes for escape from Las Noches outside of rescue. Regardless of the fact that he was doing so for his own reasons, she certainly never once imagined that it would be one of her very captors that would help her escape. This wasn't a rescue operation. It was a jailbreak.

He wrapped a large hand tightly around her upper arm, yanking her from her task and out the open door with a surprised yelp. Her hair flew in her face, obstructing her vision as objects spilled from her satchel and she was forcibly removed from her room. They were moving swiftly, she noticed, and Orihime realized she must have been pulled along in the Espada's  _Sonido._ She made a noise of protest before Grimmjow's other hand sealed itself over her mouth, her back crashing against his front. His arms wrapped around her like a vice, silencing her and stilling both of them all in one motion. Her heart pounded in her ears as she shut her lips against his cold, dry palm. She stilled as she listened for whatever caused him to stop so abruptly, he leaning against a wall and peeking around a sharp corner.

His hand slowly left her mouth and she looked up at him in question, but instead of answering he raised his freed index finger to his own lips in a quieting gesture. Orihime bit her lower lip.

Then she heard voices.

"Ulquiorra-sama," said a deferent voice in acknowledgement. She held her breath when she recognized the tone – it was the Arrancar she healed after the violent training session she'd witnessed Grimmjow in a time ago. She recalled the pummeled face she had fixed that day, and the chocolate eyes that stared at her in wonder as soon as they were able to again. Like every Arrancar she had encountered thus far, though, he looked at her with a mix of distrust and fear before scrambling away and out of the room.

Even the monsters here feared her, she thought sadly.

"What are you doing here?" said the cool voice of her green-eyed captor. He was just around the corner.

"I was looking for you, Sir," said the lower-ranking Hollow. He was direct and business-like, a tone she knew agreed with the Cuatro. She listened on.

"What is it, then?" he said, slightly impatiently. Orihime was surprised. "I am very busy at the moment."

"Of course, Sir," came the response. "Tier Halibel-sama requests your presence immediately." The revelation was met with silence, and Orihime could almost see Ulquiorra's eyes narrowing in her imagination.

"Why would she send you to deliver this message? You are not among the ranks of her  _Fracción_ ," he observed.

"I am a free agent, Sir," he said after a short pause. "I am at the service of any Espada that happens to catch me in the wrong place at the wrong time." She could almost hear the wry smile on his face as he said it. His unusual accent gave the statement a certain believable charm.

Ulquiorra was silent for a moment. Then, "Very well." The clip of his boots faded into the distance as he made his departure. Grimmjow looked down at her and met her wide eyes. He still looked nervous, but the relief she saw there was palpable.

"The coast is clear, Sir." Orihime's head spun to the right. Grimmjow loosened his grip on her and stepped around the corner, acknowledging the other Hollow.

"Which wing should we take?" asked her companion. Her arms wrapped around herself as she stepped out from behind him, belatedly realizing that the large Espada had been practically ensconcing her in his arms. She recalled only how hard the planes of his body had felt – and how cold. She quashed the bit of embarrassment that began to bubble.

She'd missed the rest of their conversation, as the next thing she knew, she was again being dragged down the hallway. She saw the fleeting look the Arrancar from the other day gave her before he, too, disappeared.

Orihime's heart clenched at the mix of intensity, caution, and – dare she think it – a smidgen of respect in the gaze he wore before he vanished. Perhaps gratitude was not lost on these monsters, after all.

"He's afraid of you, you know," Grimmjow told her through the whistling of the wind in her ears. Her reaction was surprisingly resigned.

"I know," she said softly. He spared a glance down at her, gauging her expression.

"Most of the Hollows here don't know what to think of you." She murmured a non-committal "Mm-hmm" and kept her head down, watching her feet as they darted to keep up with the Espada. She nearly collided with his back as he came to a sudden stop. He did not look down at her this time.

"What  _are_  we supposed to think of you?" he asked, deadpan and low. She caught her breath and thought of an answer.

"What do you… want me to be?"

She felt more than witnessed Grimmjow's disappointment at her answer. His grumbled response was coarse and harsh, and that more than anything brought her closer to tears than she had been all week.

"You'd better figure the fuck out of yourself soon, here, little girl. I won't be allied to a person who has yet to find a cause or purpose." His icy stare caught hers from the corner of his eye. She could see his dark profile against the backlighting of the white hallway. His grip around her wrist was just short of crushing. "I refuse to let you get us killed because you can't differentiate black and white in this greyscale world."

And that was exactly when Orihime's world burst into color once again.

Funny how much of it seemed blue.


	8. "We're in this Together Now" part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's happened... and Grimmjow's not taking any risks. Time to fast-forward the plan, and it looks like Orihime is along for the ride.

Orihime's lungs burned.

Her throat was cold and raw and her cheeks were hot and pink as she panted hard, the fall of her boots echoing to create a chorus of noises through the whitewashed halls of Las Noches.

They were running for their lives.

Grimmjow's bright blue hair was a beacon ahead of her as he maneuvered them through the maze of the palatial complex. He would pause occasionally, and she would see the sharp profile of his face as he cocked his head, listening down the hallways that stretched from the many intersections they encountered. She was glad he’d slowed down to a normal speed; there was no way she could keep up with his _Sonido_. He still looked worried, though, and that frightened her.

"What happened, Grimmjow?" She still had no idea why they were suddenly running, and her fears demanded information. He gave pause at her whispered question, looking back at her out of the corner of his eye as if just remembering that she was following him. He then continued on as if she had said nothing. She hadn't  _really_  expected him to answer, after all.

Orihime hurried after him.

She did not often see many others traversing these passageways during her regular explorations, but even she had to admit that the palace seemed eerily empty. With all the ground they had covered, she expected to have run into at least  _someone_  else following their sidestepping of Ulquiorra. She hoped it had to do with Grimmjow's evasive maneuvers.

Her skin prickled and her eyes widened when she heard a bloodcurdling shriek echo down the white corridors.

It was not quite human, nor was it like any animal she had ever heard or imagined. It was ghoulish, like the scream of a bat magnified a hundred times. Cold chills ran up her spine, and she knew herself well enough to know that her face had likely lost some of its color in her fright. It was worse when she heard her coconspirator curse under his breath in reaction to the horrible noise. He hurried his pace, and she struggled to keep up.

"Grimmjow, what's happening?" she demanded again, with increased urgency lacing her tone. He did not turn back to her this time, but did offer her a response.

"Your babysitter isn't quite the idiot I was hoping he was," came the reply. Orihime's expression changed.

"Ulquiorra…" she whispered in understanding. He merely grunted his acknowledgement ahead of her, before roughly grabbing the girl around the wrist and practically dragging her to keep up. That noise… that terrible noise was him? She had stumbled somewhat when her brain caught up with his revelation, and he could not have her hindering their impromptu escape. He refused to let his precious trump card become his liability.

They were off again, this time with the Devil at their heels.

"There!" she heard Grimmjow say, catching her attention. The white hallway ahead of them suddenly melted into inky blackness off in the distance: the exit to Las Noches. The dark at the end of the tunnel, Orihime thought ironically. As it grew closer and closer, the weight lifted from her shoulders with every burning step that got her nearer to escape.

Then the hallway imploded all around them.

Orihime screamed at the noise, and debris flew everywhere. Grimmjow cursed, yanking the girl forward by her wrist and doing his best to shield her smaller body with his own as he kept up his forward momentum. He shouted into her ear over the racket of destruction.

"Shield! Now!"

Orihime gasped.  _Of course._

With a golden sparkling, three of her fairies burst from her hairpins and surrounded the two fugitives as they emerged through the opening and into the cold desert night air.

Grimmjow cushioned the impact of their escape by tucking into a roll on the white powdery sand. Orihime nearly bit through her tongue thanks to their jarring landing, despite the protection the cage of the Espada's arms offered. He finished his roll right back on his feet, his cold eyes brutal and calculating. The girl was amazed by his composure despite the chaos all around them. Her head was still spinning, after all.

The dust was gradually settling in the ruined entryway behind them, and Orihime was a little surprised when Grimmjow forced her behind him, acting as a bodily barrier from the threat.

"What do you think you are doing, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques?" The deep, crisp, and familiar voice sent a thrill of terror down Orihime's spine. He actually sounded  _angry_.

The dust cleared enough for the two to see the imposing silhouette of the Fourth Espada draw itself against the light from the compound behind him. She trembled against the Sexta before her, the air in her lungs thickening and stifling from the oppressive and furious pressure of Ulquiorra's  _reiatsu._

Grimmjow said nothing, merely staring at his superior with a quiet, ill-concealed hatred.

Ulquiorra's verdant gaze shifted to the girl, and she met it briefly. Try as she might, she still could not understand the puzzle that was her captor. His look was intense, but entirely unreadable. It was far from expressionless, though, and that's what scared her most.

What was it? Disgust? Annoyance? Maybe it was just confusion.

...Or was it betrayal?

Orihime looked away finally, unable to meet his gaze any longer. She wore a frown on her face. He had no right to look at her that way.

Ulquiorra's eyes pinned Grimmjow again, and their staredown recommenced.

"Aizen will hear of this insubordination. You will give the girl back immediately," the Cuatro said stonily.

"Fuck you," Grimmjow responded with a sardonic grin.

 _He's lost it,_  the girl thought to herself, drowning in a cold sweat of fear. She watched Ulquiorra, face unchanging although she was certain he was thrown by the Sexta's response. He responded after a horrible pause.

"…What did you say?" The question was like cold venom.

"You'll have to fight me if you want her back, bastard," Grimmjow said with an adrenaline-fueled hiss. Orihime could hear the excitement growing in his voice. She was astonished by his change in demeanor. Gone was the nervous animal from before, replaced by this warrior and his bloodlust. This was bad. Grimmjow didn't  _actually_  think he could stand a chance against Ulquiorra, did he? "Admit it," he growled through his grinning sneer. "You're afraid to fight me, aren't you?"

Orihime was surprised by the insinuation when Ulquiorra did not offer a response. The Sexta spoke again, his  _reiki_  beginning to swirl in anticipation. She saw his right hand clench into a claw in her peripherals.

"You're afraid we'll rip each other to shreds, aren't you, Schiffer?"

Grimmjow barely finished snarling his sentence before he lunged forward, and Orihime was left trying to deflect the cloud of dust that sprung up at his attack. She could barely follow the movement, and only saw when Ulquiorra caught the Sixth's right hand in an arcing downswing, dramatically catching it in his own straining grasp. The force of the impact sent a gale across the desert floor, blowing sand and tossing clothing. Ulquiorra's face was stonily furious, and Grimmjow...

Orihime shuddered at the maniacal grin cutting his face. He was  _enjoying_  this!

She had only a moment to realize that before she watched her ally-in-escape fire a glowing Cero from point-blank range, straight into Ulquiorra's waiting hand. She made a noise and covered her head, raising her shield again now that the battle seemed to be getting out of hand. She watched Ulquiorra deflect the attack, and it blew up a wall behind them.

The next part rushed by faster than the girl could follow. One moment, Grimmjow seemed to vanish, then Ulquiorra became equally scarce. They were using  _Sonido,_ she realized, at an inhuman speed that she could barely follow with her eyes.

They suddenly appeared again, and Orihime covered her gasp with both hands. Ulquiorra was suspended in the air, directly over a searching Grimmjow, his long white index finger pointed a mere foot from the top of his light blue hair. The tip of his digit began to glow with a bright, concentrated light. He was about to fire a Cero of his own, right into Grimmjow's head.

With a reaction faster than she thought any creature had the right to possess, Grimmjow clenched his teeth and raised his hand straight up. His snarl turned into a grin again as he charged his own Cero in his open palm, then released it at the same time as his opponent's. Ulquiorra's eyes widened right before the two attacks met and the devastating explosion detonated.

Orihime watched on from behind the safety of her golden shield, hands clasped before her in worry. The destruction wrought by this latest attack created an impassable plume of dust, sand, and debris that she could not see through. Her eyes darted from end to end of the cloud, hoping to see a flash of blue anywhere.

An Ulquiorra-shaped figure flew out, and she felt her heart plummet to her stomach. Now he would take her back. Her escape was a fool's errand, she realized. And Grimmjow…

The Cuatro was looking for him, it seemed. He was tense, and searching all around for his opponent. The chaos created by the blast was still churning, and he could not see through it.

It was so thick, in fact, that he did not know Grimmjow was behind him until his strong arm reached around his left side and over his front. It clasped at his lapel and the pectoral beneath it, and Ulquiorra recognized it as a desperate grab for purchase. His eyes narrowed as his head turned to face his attacker, ready to blast him into oblivion once and for all, Aizen's plans for him be damned.

By the time he realized his mistake, it was far too late to do anything about it.

Grimmjow's hand was planted square over the hole in his chest as the tiny  _Caja Negación_ slipped in. His vibrant green eyes widened with the shock of his error.  _I've been outsmarted… by this_ heathen _?_

The power of the device sent a paralyzing shock throughout his body before thick black ribbons blossomed from his empty center, reaching out in all directions before converging like a blooming bud moving backward in time. Grimmjow had already leaped out of the way, and Ulquiorra could only manage to say one thing as the dimensional restraints swirled around him.

"Damn."

Then he vanished, and Grimmjow turned to look at the girl on the barren desert floor below, face cold and stoic in his victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't sit through reading action scenes, so please tell me if I need to improve at writing one.
> 
> Also, if anyone hates to read through them as much as I do, then know that I essentially narrated the skirmish scene between Grimmjow and Ulquiorra in manga chapter 278. I fully admit to pilfering the action and sneaking in my own dialogue, fufufu.


	9. "Awake to the Sound"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orihime and Grimmjow seemed to have escaped from Las Noches and their pursuer for now, but is it out of the frying pan and into the fire for our human heroine?

"I don't  _want_  you to use your stupid fucking fairies on it!" he barked.

"But you're hurt!" Orihime whined.

"It's a  _scratch_ , you bumblefuck. I'm not a goddamn invalid," he replied irritably. Grimmjow sneered when her cheeks puffed up in a pout. He idly wondered if she was making the face at his obstinacy or his language.

The  _Caja Negación_ could only contain an Espada like Ulquiorra for two to three hours, as Grimmjow had explained it, so the two of them had run for their lives following the short skirmish. The Sexta had spent the first half hour with Orihime in his arms, using his  _Sonido_ to the point of exhaustion. When he could no longer maintain the speed, he put her down on the sand, and together they trudged for hours further. Orihime knew better than to complain, no matter how uncomfortable the cold desert was. Her questions burned on the tip of her tongue, though. She dared not ask them; not yet, anyway.

After hours of trekking through the white sands, Grimmjow finally called a halt to their flight. Like the deserts she had seen on television back in the world of the living, this one, too, was dotted with desolate rocky formations and skeletal mountain ranges. He chose a tiny system of limestone caves, and the two hid there for a few hours of recovery.

The arm he'd used to halt Ulquiorra's point-blank Cero had been charred horribly by the attack, and Grimmjow had been too tired to stop Orihime from fretting over it. He laid back while her golden shield folded warmly over it, still short of breath and with little to say. He watched her work her magic with hooded eyes.

Now, his arm was healed, his breath filled his lungs fully, and his eyebrow twitched in annoyance. He was  _fine_ , and she was still being an annoying little  _bitch_ about the tiny little cut on his brow.

Regardless, they had reached an impasse, and he had a feeling he'd won this particular battle as he watched her worry her bottom lip and fiddle with the edge of her white gown. She would back off. He leaned back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest and stretching out his legs before him. He closed his eyes and prepared to rest, physically healed but mentally spent.

She was suspiciously silent.

Minutes passed, and the stretching quiet coming from his characteristically noisy neighbor made him slightly uneasy. He'd stolen enough time with her during their – admittedly quite entertaining – visits in Las Noches for him to know better; his instincts stirred at the abnormality.

Realizing he was getting no rest, Grimmjow eventually cracked open his left eye. He betrayed no surprise as he noted the supremely guilty look on Orihime's face, inches from his own as she found herself caught hovering over him in an attempt to tape a butterfly bandage over his left eye. Where she had procured it from, he had no idea. Maybe her tits were storage containers or something, he thought crudely to himself. She started sweating bullets when his one open eye narrowed accusingly at her.

"Um," she said intelligently. This was rapidly turning into a Very Bad Idea.

Orihime was bent oddly over her defiant patient, her top half barely balanced above his reclined shape as she leaned over on her knees in their low shelter. Things didn’t seem nearly so awkward when she’d fancied him asleep; now, though, it was as if the penetrating stare of his shocking eyes forced her in like gravity. She was rocketing back down to Earth and the unavoidable realization that their proximity was now quite… alarming.

She’d tended to avoid looking him in the eyes. Whereas hers were welcoming – warm, earthy, and almost gray – his were an intense shade of aquamarine that intimidated her into looking anywhere but at them. They were blue like the sky on a clear, crisp winter day – darker around the outside of his irises before the stark whites of his eyes abruptly took over. His pupils were constricted like a predator honing in on its dinner. She recalled the few moments when she’d noticed them dilate in the time she’d known him; it was normally when he was laughing at her.

Orihime gulped when she heard the unmistakable sound of him shifting on the stones. He slowly and surely lifted himself forward from his recline, never breaking eye contact with the girl. As if in the midst of a modern dance, she moved backward in tandem, perfectly maintaining the distance that separated them. Her wild imagination flared to life for a moment, and she envisioned him as a big wildcat stalking his wide-eyed prey with careful and graceful precision. He crawled forward on his hands in the cramped space and over the few short feet to her, adding to the mental image. She nervously jarred herself back into the moment.

By this point Grimmjow had leaned forward completely, and he did not even need to flare his  _reiatsu_  for Orihime to feel the oppressive nature of his aura try to dominate her. She was trying her best not to come off as  _cowering_ , but that was difficult as he leaned over her in a significantly more… suggestive reflection of her earlier position.

Her face burned scarlet the closer he got, certain that this was indecent in some way but very forgetful as to  _why_ when his closeness made it so hard to breathe. Her mind began making rapid-fire observations, a habit that tended to surface when she was nervous. She suddenly noticed  _how much_  larger this man was than her. She went cross-eyed when she saw how very straight his nose was, and, oh, my, his eyelashes were the same color as his hair, and they clashed horribly with the strange teal stripes under his eyes, and his jaw was actually quite chiseled under that gruesome panther-like bone, but was it a growth from his own bone or was it sitting atop his flesh like a mask? Did he brush his mask when he brushed his teeth? _Do Espada brush their teeth?_

 _I can feel his breath on my face,_ she thought, lightheaded.

Orihime was startled to realize he had said something, and she'd missed it completely. She stuttered when she asked him to repeat himself.

"I said, 'Be careful.' If I wake up to find you doing something like that again, I'll have to take it as an invitation," he said huskily, his expression aflame.

Throat dry, she swallowed painfully and stared up at him like a rabbit, looking innocent as ever even at the cusp of her own sentencing. She was not oblivious to the direction this could go, and under her terror she hoped that Grimmjow was simply trying to intimidate away her brazenness.

She had no idea what she would do if it turned out he was not kidding.

Her whole face tingled, and her lips in particular felt numb as she noticed his gaze drop to them, hungry contemplation dancing in the depths of his hooded expression. He was mere inches away, and she was certain she would be able to feel a fiery body temperature had he been  _alive_. She waited for his move with bated breath, her chest heaving slowly with nervous anticipation.

She felt cool air brush across her face once in a huff, along with a whispered bark of laughter.

"Dumbass," he said under his breath as he casually bumped her under the chin with his index finger before moving away, back to his side of the crevasse. "Don't touch my face," he warned her before closing his eyes again and trying to get some rest.

Orihime exhaled shallowly. He moved away from her, and it was like the world went back into play.

She'd never felt  _that_  before. It was like the butterflies from every crush she'd ever had in her life decided to throw a party in her belly all at once. Her brain worked using singular words, like "close" or "blue", and she was certain she had been gaping like a fish, face slack with submissive anticipation.

_Darn him!_

So much had already transpired today, and her psyche was certainly not prepared for another curveball to her already tattered nerves. Stubborn in her exhaustion, her brain decided now was not the time to process whatever…  _that_  just was.

She felt like a fool, but she realized that she was so far out of her league and realm of comfort that perhaps she needed some time to recover from this incident. As soon as her cogs started turning again, she could worry about what just happened.

In the meantime, though…

_I think this warrants a nap, now._

She suddenly felt her exhaustion crash over her. Despite her roiling emotions, she was asleep in minutes.

She never noticed the sliver of blue staring at her from her companion's eyes across the short way.

He watched over her the entire night.


	10. "Holding on to When"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're still running... but they're learning a bit about one another while they're at it.

She didn't realize the desert would be so cold.

That was stupid of her, she thought in hindsight. Orihime's uniform, despite being long-sleeved, did not defend her very well against the chill.

"So what's it like out there in the big bad World?" Her head spun around at the unprompted question, and she turned to face her companion. She was trying to rub feeling back into her arms with her hands. They'd been trudging the coarse white sand together in silence for hours now, and she had not expected that to change on account of anyone's contribution but her own. He'd been studiously avoiding her questioning all this time after all.

Her tall Espada kept his gaze firmly locked on the dark horizon as his strides remained wide and measured. Orihime noticed with some surprise that his sleeves were rolled down and his jacket was partially zipped. She never suspected that the dead could get cold.

"What, you mean the world of the living?" She took his silence as confirmation. "Uhm… the same, I guess?" She had no idea how to answer the unusual question and hoped for some guidance.

Grimmjow snorted. His deep voice was dry with sarcasm as he responded. "Uh-huh. Because all those tall, blocky buildings really reminded me of the deserts here back home." He flashed her a sidelong glance, and she was grateful that his icy eyes remained on her for only a moment. "Your imagination practically shits rainbows and unicorns; I'm pretty sure you can give me a  _slightly_  more colorful description than that," he said sardonically.

Her cheeks puffed up in insult, but she rose to the challenge. Let him  _try_  to shut her up now. "Well, I mean Karakura's kind of suburbia, but it's sort of neat how you can't tell where it ends and the big city starts. They just sort of bleed into one another," she began, using his reference to the local architecture as a starting point. He had her motor running, and she was in her element. "Really, it's not until you start seeing the super-nice cars that you realize you're in the city at all! Although we've also got a really cute park where-…"

He cut her off with a question. "What's a 'car'?"

She stared wide-eyed at his departing back as he kept walking away, he unaware that Orihime had stopped in her tracks, jaw hanging. The Espada only turned around when he noted her silence, then he narrowed his eyes at how far back she had fallen. "Now what?" he asked, annoyed.

"It's a… it's this way we get around, and… it's metal, and…" She couldn't help the slightly shrill note her voice took at her next question. "Exactly how long have you been dead, Grimmjow?"

He raised his chin haughtily as he examined her through calculating eyes, judging whether there was any insult meant by her inquiry. Ultimately finding her question to be relatively harmless, he gave a languid blink and turned his head to the side lazily, shrugging his shoulders all in one movement. "I don't know… few hundred years?"

Her brain felt like someone was gently melting a slice of cheese onto it, oozing into the nooks and crannies and slowing down her faculties with this particular new bit of fascinating information. She had no idea why, but this intriguing new fact made her suddenly and inexplicably  _happy_.

Thinking back on it, she was sure that some of her Shinigami friends must have been just as old. She was now disappointed in herself for never asking them such a question. She would rectify that error with the new friend before her.

"Didn't you see cars every time you were in the real world to hunt and haunt and just… generally wreak havoc?" she asked him. "They've been around for… well, over a hundred years, depending on the part of the world."

He made a clicking noise between his cheek and molars, then answered. "Tch, I haven't been back there regularly in a century. Menos-class Hollows can't survive long just feeding over there; there's not enough  _reiki_  to make it worth our while." As if in demonstration, he snapped off a crystal branch from one of the skeletal sapling trees scattered throughout the desert, holding it in his left hand and staring at it. Orihime watched as it simply dissolved under his heavy glare, the sparkling particles melting into his large hand. "The very air here is saturated with spiritual energy. Hueco Mundo is much more suited to support us than your shitty home."

"...Wow. I didn't know any of that," she told him honestly. There was so much about this world that she had yet to learn. She was still curious, though. "So... What era  _were_ you alive for?"

For the first time, she watched as he gave her somewhat of a deer-in-the-headlights look. It lasted a solid moment, until he raised his eyebrows and shrugged, the downturn of the corners of his lips exaggerated.

"Dunno, I guess."

Orihime was supremely dissatisfied with his answer.

"'Dunno,' as in you don't remember? Or 'Dunno,' as in none of my business?" she asked in a rare moment of shrewdness. He gave her a look, and she tried to defend herself. "I mean, ghosts become Hollows because of regrets and sins and all that stuff from life, right? Doesn't that... Doesn't that by default mean that you guys remember?"

The cold glower on his face had her hesitating by the end of her observation, but the dogs were loose, and there was no stopping her runaway mouth.  _That was so rude of me,_ she thought to herself. She wished she could take it back and shrunk at his dangerous look.

"So you're saying I should go out of my way to try to remember something as miserable as what got me here in the first place," he said slowly, condescendingly. "I'm pretty sure that after hundreds of years, I really don't give a shit." He didn't bother to hide the scathing patronization in his tone.

Properly chastised, Orihime ducked her head in embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she said in a small voice. "I guess it doesn't really matter after that long, does it?" She couldn't imagine he'd  _want_  to remember. His amnesia was probably a blessing.

The silence between the two reigned heavy and awkward for many minutes after that. She would occasionally steal glances at her companion, her spirits sinking and her stomach churning at the intense frown marring his features, clearly distracted by his own thoughts as they proceeded across the white desert. She felt awful.

What if she'd just inadvertently made him relive some centuries-buried unspeakable horror? She'd never forgive herself if that was the case.

The pressure was building as her guilt came to a rolling boil. She was ready to burst with an apology of some sort, gibberish though it may have become by the time it left her mouth. Before she could say anything, though, she was stymied by his next unexpected statement.

"So you never really answered my question."

Cut-off moments before her outburst, she raised her eyebrows in question and with mouth agape.

"Eh?"

He looked at her with an annoyance that she was becoming accustomed to before he clarified.

"What's a car?"

And after a pause, Orihime couldn't stop the incredulous giggle from escaping her throat.

Monsters were all she'd seen since being brought here to Hueco Mundo, whether they were feeding her, beating her senseless, or threatening her psyche. But this monster before her was changing her perspective, little by little.

It was because of this unprompted fascination with the automobile that she realized, dead or not, Grimmjow really was indeed once a human…

…and once a human man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, personally, want so badly to know the stories behind the living days of our favorite Shinigami, and especially of the Hollows. What personal tragedies or grievous sins made them the way they are in the afterlife? I think it's been a majorly wasted opportunity by KT, and frankly a way better idea than this Thousand Year War debacle going on right now.


	11. "If the World  Should Break in Two"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow reveals his cards. Orihime doesn't reveal much. _For once._

Orihime was nervous.

Her throat was dry, her mouth felt like it was filled with cotton balls, and there was a churning in her upper stomach like heartburn, but weaker.

She'd had enough. She would finally draw the line and demand her answers. The young woman planted her feet in the white sand and refused to go any further.

"G-Grimmjow." She mentally cursed the stutter.

The tall Espada was only a few strides ahead of her, hands in his pockets and posture slumped and relaxed as he led the way. Even he, though, recognized her resolution for what it was, and he stopped. The Sexta did not turn around.

"Where are we going?" Her tone was plaintive, bordering on desperate but without the whine. It was killing her, he could tell. A moment passed as the tension whooshed between them, like the breeze across the dunes they'd just crossed.

He sighed, then kept walking.

Orihime could not help the tiny keen that began to escape from her throat as she started after him, certain that she'd again missed an opportunity to gain insight into this severe man's head. She cut off the noise immediately, however, when he suddenly spoke.

"They're called the Negal Ruins."

The young woman sucked in a surprised breath then scrambled on her feet to catch up to him. Once she was alongside the tall Arrancar, she looked up into his face, eyes wide with unbridled, childlike curiosity. He was more used to her skirting his intense gaze, and the imploring openness in her expression and her undivided attention made him somewhat uncomfortable. They walked on, step-in-step.

She clearly expected him to say more. He magnanimously decided not to disappoint.

"It's the original seat of power here in Hueco Mundo. Barragan held his court there, like every Hollow king before him." His voice lowered dangerously. "Everyone before Aizen."

He cast his human companion a glance and let his lips quirk in amusement at her silent, engrossed look. He was almost glad he'd dragged the mystery out for so long; her eyes were practically glittery in their wonder. It was so comical, it bordered on creepy, so he didn't maintain eye contact for too long. She was waiting for more, and Grimmjow was suddenly pleased to deliver.

"Legend says that there's a 'gate' hidden there, somewhere in the ruins of the palace. It's a gate that would allow the King to travel anywhere in this world in an instant, just by walking through." He gave the girl a pointed look, wondering if she had caught on yet. "The King could rule to the far corners of Hueco Mundo, all from this throne, because no place was hidden from his reach." He watched as the cogs turned behind her curious eyes. His instincts insisted that this girl was much smarter than she let on, and he felt a minor victory when she proved him right in the next moment.

"We could use it to get back into Las Noches, and Aizen would be none-the-wiser," she said slowly, hesitantly. He enjoyed the way her brows furrowed daintily as he observed the idea light up her face like a struck match. "We could… We could destroy the Hougyoku, all while he thinks we're somewhere in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away. Couldn't we?" He complimented her skills of deduction.

"Well, looks like you're not all tits, after all. Good job, Princess." He grinned at the way the blush flared on her face as the crude compliment twisted it into a grimace. Fighting down her own reaction, she continued.

"Sooo… how far is this place?" she asked, quite reasonably. Orihime cringed when the Arrancar popped his neck before responding.

"Let's just say we're going to be walking for a while." She felt slightly queasy at the prospect, then brightened.

"It'll be like a road trip!" she exclaimed, straightening up and clasping her hands behind her back. Her eyes squinted as she smiled up at him bravely. One of Grimmjow's brows arched at her audacity, wondering both how she could catapult from one emotion to another so freely – and _why_ she was trying to feign normalcy with him at all.

"Sure," he responded with disinterest.

Orihime adjusted the strap of her rucksack on her shoulder and plodded along next to him.

As much as he hated useless banter, he found there was something unnatural about silence when she was around. He was almost relieved, then, when she spoke up again, initiating the most one-sided, pointless conversation he'd ever been a part of.

She made mention of anything and everything, from the unusual, barren scenery around them to the perpetual nighttime, to the doom-and-gloom of her former Espada captor, Ulquiorra, to her favorite subject in school. He found his own amusement in sometimes trying to figure out how she jumped from one topic to the next, rarely finding anything in common between her seemingly random thoughts.

Then she brought up Kurosaki.

His effortless amusement turned into a stormy glower almost immediately, his aggravation practically instantaneous at the mere mention of the teenaged boy's name. He'd almost forgotten about that brat, what with everything else going on. Orihime continued on in oblivion.

"You know, his family runs a clinic. I've thought once or twice about asking for a part-time position there, what with all the healing and stuff I can do. I mean, I know my passion lies in all things food – heh – but it would be a waste not to help people with the gifts I have, right? That, and I could spend time with Kurosaki-kun after school and it wouldn't be weird at all!" she ended the thought with a warm smile and rosy cheeks. Clearly the idea pleased her a great deal.

"Why the fuck would you want to spend more time than necessary with that worthless crotch stain?" Grimmjow snarled. Drawn out of her comfortable fantasy, Orihime looked up at her companion in shock. Wisely treading cautiously around his dramatic change in disposition, she asked a tentative question as she eyeballed him uneasily.

"W-well… Kurosaki-kun is my friend." Then, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, but because she needed the clarification, she risked a question. "Do you… not like Kurosaki-kun, Grimmjow?"

Just the sound of the boy's name put a foul taste in the Espada's mouth, but as he looked down at the girl fidgeting uncomfortably beside him, he realized how impossible it would be for her to understand. Theirs was a warrior's rivalry, cultivated by little more than the knowledge that there was someone out there who was so similar and yet so different, and that the outcome of their battles was never determined by physical strength or tactical prowess or even the strength of their resolve, but instead by random, infuriating interferences every. Single. Time. He hated the arrogance with which this boy fought, safe in his knowledge that his cause was righteous and that his friends were forever supportive and under the impression that these were the reasons he had survived his encounters with the Sexta Espada. Grimmjow, in contrast, was certain it was really nothing more than sheer dumb luck.

Nothing pissed the blue-haired Arrancar off more than weaker opponents deluded into believing that they could  _ever_  best him. The fantasy didn't work out too well for Luppi, after all.

Grimmjow ran two fingers lightly over the massive scar that peeked out from the top of his jacket and over the left side of his collarbone. "Let's just say he owes me a rematch. And I owe him a good, decent ass-kicking."

Orihime's eyes traced his fingers' movements silently and observantly, never acknowledging his own glare. The gaze was almost  _sad_ , he found as she continued her quiet stare, and he was unnerved by how her large gray eyes stayed on his scar. He did not really know what he expected her to say, but he realized he felt almost… nervous under her examination.

So used to her vapid, flighty, air-headedness as he'd become, he was suddenly on the receiving end of the most insightful look he'd been given since meeting Aizen for the first time, and it made the hair on his arms stand on end. He felt stripped bare by this little girl's sad, soulful, ancient eyes, and he realized just then by this look alone how worthy she truly may be of her godlike power.

His hand dropped to his side, and the two continued walking in silence. Orihime's gaze returned to the sand before them, the quiet between the pair finally natural as she was overcome by thoughts that Grimmjow was not privy to.

It seemed this young human that he'd allied himself to carried more demons than the ones Las Noches had burdened her with. He made a vague sound of interest under his breath, heard only by himself.

Perhaps, one day, he'd ask her about them.

They walked on into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken the liberty to do whatever the hell I want with the Negal Ruins, since KT made a big show of introducing them and then forgetting about them entirely. There. Now they're important. *raspberry*


	12. "As they Peel Apart the Skin"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our two heroes are still on the run. Grimmjow is surprised by just about everything Orihime is and represents. Orihime feels herself up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it me or is it starting to feel a little fluffy in here?

She was tiring, he could tell.

The girl had surprised him an hour ago when they were attacked by a trio of low-level Hollows. The weaker ones tended to travel in groups.

When he'd immediately jumped into action, he drew his sword and separated the largest one from the other two right off the bat. Its physiology hinted at a capacity for projectile assaults, so Grimmjow knew the key was to dispatch it right away.

Following a series of leading attacks, the former Espada swung Pantera into action. He deflected the poisonous darts that fired from the monster’s frilly mane, his sword clanging at every strike. This creature posed little challenge, he realized almost immediately. There was no feral grin tinged with bloodlust as he sliced through this Hollow's tough flesh, meeting little resistance. All too soon, the elephant-sized beast came tumbling down into the sand, bellowing in the throes of final death.

Years ago, before Aizen and the Hougyoku, Grimmjow would have taken a piece of its flesh for himself. Now, though, the action would have done nothing to help him grow, so he suppressed the inherent urge. Besides, he'd probably frighten that fool of a girl silly.

_Shit. Speaking of which…_

She wasn't screaming yet, so she'd either run away or gotten eaten. Either outcome would have been regrettable.

When Grimmjow turned to face the two remaining Hollows, though, he had to stop and blink twice.

Orihime stood there in the sand, feet balanced on their balls and set shoulder width apart. The two Hollows were both collapsed on their sides, bodies dissolving with a thick, wet hiss into colorless ash from two massive entrance and exit wounds. His brows raised as he watched a violent streak of light – unmistakably that Tsubaki of hers – return to one of her hairclips.

_I'll be damned._

"Huh. Not totally useless after all, are you chick?"

Orihime merely smiled and cocked her head to the side cutely, and Grimmjow rolled his eyes. He deftly flicked the remains of the Hollow off his sword before resheathing it, and they continued.

Now, an hour later, he decided to call a halt to their flight. The girl looked exhausted, and he was more worried about her faceplanting into the dunes than he was about getting caught. Las Noches could wait.

Problem was, as she settled in, she started  _talking_ again. And the silence had been so  _nice…_

"What's your favorite food?" Orihime asked absently. Conversation had been sparse since he'd revealed his revulsion for Kurosaki-kun, and at first she couldn't muster up the interest to keep the idle chatter going. Leave it to her to make friends with people who were so complicatedly embroiled, she thought. Now that some time had passed and they'd stopped for a break, though, she hoped a different topic might make him open up again.

Grimmjow was silent for a second as he digested the absurdity of the random question.

"I don't need to eat."

Orihime's gasp alone spoke volumes over the affront she felt on his behalf.

"You're  _kidding_!" she said, horror lacing her tone. "Not even for fun?!" Grimmjow made a face at her, making it abundantly evident how daft he found her in that moment.

"Why the hell would I bother eating food when I don't have to?" Orihime's hands rushed to her cheeks, then to her chest, then over her stomach as if she did not quite know where to place them to make her astonishment most evident.

"But, Grimmjow! There's so much good food out there!" A wistful look came over her face. "There's chocolate, and anchovies, and honey, and bean paste... Oh, and mango! And warm fresh bread, or cold ice cream... Corn flavored!" His expression was laced with mild amusement as he watched her flutter off into an imagination-induced daze, her hands articulating what her words couldn't manage.

"I hope you're not talking about all those flavors together..." he said, somewhat teasingly. She snapped her attention back to his face with a questioning look.

"Why not?" she asked, quite seriously. He turned slightly green.

"You're so fucking weird, you know that?" he said, equally serious as he pinned her with hard eyes.

He did not get the reaction he was hoping for. Grimmjow was more confused and somewhat dumbstruck when, instead of shame or bashfulness, a dazzling smile broke out across her face.

"'Weird' is just a matter of perspective, silly. At least I keep things interesting."

Her honest – and admittedly very pretty – smile threw him off kilter. This was... Not the reaction he had been expecting. Where was the stuttering and frantic waving of hands and the predictability? There was a formula this girl was supposed to follow, and she simply wasn't sticking to it. It was infuriating how after all this time, he still didn't have her pegged. He went slightly slack-jawed as he was reminded of just how much _life_ his companion had in her.

It was intoxicating.

Grimmjow watched her auburn locks sway from side to side as he fell into a distracted daze behind her. He reflected, as he watched her wrestle animatedly with the drawstrings on her satchel, that everything about his existence circled around death, destruction, and emptiness. It was his very nature.  _Hollow_.

This girl, though... This _fucking girl._

She seemed to breathe life and light wherever she went. Even the desolate halls of Las Noches seemed to buzz with vitality whenever he would near her cell chamber. It contributed to his curiosity about the woman; it was why he always found himself drawn to her wing during the deadest of hours like a moth to a flame, little to her knowledge.

Her mere presence almost seemed to soothe the gaping ache, the literal emptiness physically manifested as the hole in his midsection. He felt it again: the flutter of _something_ long-ago lost and sought after and craved and starved for… Was this what his fragmented soul was looking for all this time? What _was_ this?

As positive emotions that he had not experienced since his days as a living man flickered to life in him, he begrudgingly began to admit to himself that he might not, in fact, despise this girl. Far from it, actually.

He even harbored an ounce of respect for her. She wasn't his prisoner. No, not anymore, if she ever could have even been called that. She was his willing and capable ally, and he was faced with something he couldn't remember ever having in this afterlife.

A friend.

"Grimmjow?"

 _Balls._ Caught staring, he did his best to save face. Her wide eyes were filled with inquiry, and he could detect the trace of worry she felt at his uncharacteristic pensiveness. Backtracking to their earlier conversation, he deflected like a professional, hoping to knock his partner off balance.

"Pff,” he scoffed. “'Interesting'? The only interesting thing about you is your mammoth knockers, chick."  _A little late of a comeback_ , he thought with a grimace, _but then again think about your audience. That should probably do it._

To his abject horror, he watched dumbfounded as his plan backfired spectacularly.

Orihime merely blinked once, then looked down curiously at her own breasts. She lifted her hands and – _God help him_ – cupped them solidly, as if weighing them. His voice caught humiliatingly in his throat at the sight, torn between incredulity at her brazenness and sheer lustfulness. He certainly wasn’t the Espada of Stoicism, no-sir-ee, and the devil on his shoulder was cackling gleefully. 

He blinked hard and swung his eyes away from the display, inhaling through his teeth in a hiss.

"Gah, jeeze. What the hell are you trying to do, ya dumb bitch, give me a hard-on? Christ. Put that shit away." _She’s just a stupid girl that’s more trouble than she’s worth and who_ cares _if she’s got hooters to rival Tia’s with a personality that’s actually approachable and shit Goddamn… FUCK!_

"I don't see what's so interesting about them, really," he heard her say. Her hands were still holding them, and he could vividly imagine her gently pushing them together, lifting them,  _squeezing_ them.  _Crap crap crap._ It took all of his willpower not to look again.

"Tits are the most interesting thing in the world to a dude, idiot. Just ask any straight friend you have," he explained impatiently toward the sky.  _Ulquiorra smiling. Szayel's ugly face. Aizen dancing. Tousen kissing Yammy!_ Grimmjow grasped frantically for distracting subject matter.  _Barragan in a bikini!_

His last visualization was like ice water on his libido. He breathed a pent up sigh of relief and squinted his eyes shut before turning to Orihime again, heat still crawling up his neck. He wouldn't be surprised if there was steam coming off his head in the chilly desert night air.

"Boys are so weird," he heard her mumble under her breath. He risked opening his eyes all the way, and was glad to see that her hands had returned to her sides. She was getting comfortable, and fortunately that did not involve auto-assaulting her anatomy. He let out another shaky breath, this one relieved.

"'Weird' is just a matter of perspective, stupid," he said drily, fishing for a reaction. There was an amused glint in his tired eyes as she turned to face him with some astonishment, surprised that he’d taken account of what she had said earlier. Orihime gave him a small smile at his indirect acknowledgement.

She let her eyes linger on the former Espada for a moment longer than usual as she curled her arms around her knees, bringing them to her chin for a moment. He fearlessly watched her big gray eyes as they glinted the reflection of the strange night sky back at him. Content in a way she hadn't been in a very long time, Orihime’s lips curled into a soft smile as she settled back in to a comfortable position and prepared to nap.

"Goodnight, Grimmjow."

He was half tempted to respond, but as was becoming their custom, he answered her with his silence instead.

As he watched her drift off, his thoughts flew in wild circles, reminiscent of the fairies from her girly hairclips. Though he was conflicted, he found himself strangely satisfied with the conclusions he'd drawn about his relationship with this young woman before him.

Of course, it figured that his ally and first real friend would be a babe that he couldn't quite bring himself to touch. He cursed to himself. Why couldn't she have been a cow? Or at least an irredeemable bitch.

"When you chew your food and swallow," she said sleepily through the silence, "does it just sort of fall through the hole in your stomach?"

_Damn it all._

"Go to  _sleep,_ Orihime."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep on editing right before I go to bed, when the changes I make seem deeply profound and emotional. Then I read through it again when I'm awake and functional and all I can think is _whatthehell_ where did my masterpiece go?
> 
> Bawabawa might finally make his first appearance here soon, for those of you that have clearly only read to this point because I promised he'd be here somewhere. *sparkle*


	13. "They Pick and they Pull"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orihime makes a friend. As is usual.

She could make friends with a rock if she wanted to, Grimmjow mused.

Despite his recent revelations weighing heavily on his mind, he’d woken her again so they could continue on their flight from Las Noches. She had started this leg of their journey groggy and fatigued, and he was annoyed that her needs were so _human._  

After some time, though, her head had cleared up, and his irritation fizzled away with every increasingly surefooted step he heard her take on the sand. A couple of hours passed like this, her concentration focused on her own feet and his responses to her occasional questions nothing if not monosyllabic.

That was when she made another friend.

The two travelers quite literally stumbled across a massive desert-worm Hollow, the monstrous creature bursting from the white sand beneath their feet. It bellowed hungrily, clearly sensing the girl's living  _reiatsu_  and assuming it had an easy meal before it.

Grimmjow immediately fell into a ready stance, a bored - and bothered - expression on his face as he prepared to dispatch the nuisance. The girl had clumsily tumbled to the wayside, separated from him by the massive serpentine body. She didn't have an ounce of combatant in her, he thought with a curious combination of worry and humored exasperation.

Hand on the hilt of _Pantera,_ his muscles coiled in preparation to pounce on this latest beast. The metallic “sshk!” of his katana peeking out of its sheath was the only warning the monster would have. Then he heard Orihime’s disembodied voice exclaim over the rushing sand.

"Whoa!" Grimmjow cocked his head to the side at the noise and listened. "You look so weird!" Her words made him roll his eyes. Profundity was not her ally today.

She was right, though. The purple worm-Hollow's face was nothing more than a giant set of pink lips that housed an awkwardly large set of teeth. Atop its head sat a horned bone mask like a visor, and it had no eyes that he could make out. Even Grimmjow had to admit that the predator looked pretty ridiculous.

Then, against all that was unholy in this wasteland of a purgatory, it started crying.

The former Espada quite simply deflated, incredulous. His grip on the hilt of his sword slackened, though his hand did not drop from the weapon. The wailing noises the worm was making were quite beyond anything he had the capacity to handle, and his expression evolved into a strange cross between fury, disgust, and helplessness. He watched as Orihime, again in view, finally started to panic.

Waving her hands in front of her frantically in an apologetic gesture, she spoke again. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it like that!" she said in a high pitch, mortification quickly slipping to the forefront. He observed with morbid amusement as she fumbled for a placation.

"What I meant was, I've never seen anything like you!" The Hollow continued to wail. "You're 'weird' as in 'cool' and 'unique'! Cool-weird!" she tried to reassure.

The monster's cries lessened in volume as it absorbed her continued attempts at diplomacy. Grimmjow offhandedly wondered where its tears were coming from, seeing as how it had no eyes.

"You know what? I was so wrong. You're not weird-looking at all!" She clasped her hands in front of her face, trying to look as sincere as possible. "I don't know what I was thinking when I said that. You must have just surprised me, because you are super awesome-looking." The Hollow somehow managed a plaintive expression. "I mean it! Honestly!"

With one last sniffle, the altercation was over.

Grimmjow could not suspend his disbelief when she, fearless in her _stupidity_ , took a step forward and started scratching the worm under the chin.

"Who's a handsome Hollow? You are!" She spoke as if to a dog, coddling him now that he was compliant. Soft tremors shook the earth beneath his feet as the tip of the monster’s tail smacked the ground repeatedly in budding glee. The girl was clearly forgiven.

"So what's your name, handsome?" Grimmjow scowled mightily at the overheard nickname, internalizing the pout he _really_ wanted to express. All this time together, and she certainly never said such nice things to  _him_...

"Bawabawa," the monster responded deeply, taking both the human and the Arrancar by surprise. It could speak.

 _Huh_. Even his name was stupid, the ignored Espada thought somewhat petulantly. "That's an awesome name!" he heard Orihime exclaim instead. He sighed loudly as he stood tall, all semblances of his attacking posture gone. Grimmjow stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked around the monstrous worm, greeting the chatty pair on the other side with an unamused sneer. She and the Hollow were already acting like best friends.

"Grimmjow, did you know that Bawabawa can swim in the sand like a whale in water?" she exclaimed, trying to draw her aloof partner into the conversation as she continued to scratch the Hollow's head. Grimmjow was having none of it.

"Are you serious right now?" he asked, mustering as annoyed a tone as he could contrive. It was not difficult. "Move your ass, Princess. We don't have time for this shit." He approached, then addressed the Hollow. "You will make yourself scarce, if you know what's good for you," he growled sinisterly.

Bawabawa looked at him dumbly, then back down at Orihime. "Where are you going?"

Grimmjow bristled, unused to being ignored by such a weak creature. Before he could voice his displeasure, though, the girl responded.

"We're headed for the Negal Ruins. We're on the run!" she added conspiratorially at the end. While Grimmjow made a face at her audacity and inability to keep quiet about matters, the tremendous sand worm made an unmistakable noise of interest.

"Bawabawa knows where the Ruins are! Bawabawa can take you there fast!" he said, referring to himself in the third person. Orihime gasped at their fortune.

"Can you really?!" she exclaimed.

"No," Grimmjow cut in with finality, his dangerous tone booking no room for argument. The girl finally turned to him, paying the Arrancar her full attention for the first time during the encounter. She had a pout on her face as her large eyes looked up at her ally pleadingly.

 _She’s shit out of luck if she thinks that garbage will work on me,_ he thought to himself as he painted a foul sneer on his face.

"But... Why not? I'm sure we can get there way faster on his back!" Grimmjow snorted. At his continued look of noncompliance, she pouted further. "And my feet hurt!" she whined. She was being quite persistent with this one, he noticed. "I'm only going to slow you down if we keep walking like this. And I'm sure  _you_  don't want to carry me..." His sneer grew despite her increasingly convincing argument.

 _You’re right,_ he almost started. _I’m still making you walk, you whiny bitch._

But the words never left his mouth, and instead the two commenced a stare down. He absolutely towered over the girl, and he wanted her to _feel_ how pissed he was right now. He stepped right up to her, making her crane her neck in order to maintain eye contact.

They stood like that for a solid moment, one with narrowed icy eyes and a firm stance and the other warm and open and pleading and so  _goddamn_  adorable. Bawabawa looked nervously between the two. Grimmjow’s thin eyebrow twitched. Orihime’s eyes glistened.

With an air of one absolutely put-upon, the Arrancar waited for a few moments before sighing deeply and looking away. "I'm not stopping him if he decides to eat you, chick," he said in a quiet rumble. Orihime blinked dumbly for a moment, rooted in place as she processed her victory. As soon as it registered, her face brightened tenfold, and she twirled to face her new ride.

"Hooray!" she cried, throwing her hands up in the air and celebrating with Bawabawa. The Hollow echoed her exclamations, his long body undulating in a strange dance. Grimmjow’s heavy exhale turned into a mighty groan as he turned away from the embarrassing sight.

"This is going to haunt me, I just know it," he complained to no one in particular.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deserts and worms seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly in popular media. It's just a given.


	14. "Trying to get their Fingers in"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their journey comes to an end, but it's only the beginning of their problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Negal Ruins are canon to the manga, but unfortunately KT did not go into any depth regarding their existence or purpose. I've taken the liberty to use them to my storytelling advantage. Many domos.

When he'd first mentioned the Negal Ruins to her, Orihime didn't know quite what to expect. Not one to waste breath on adjectives, his minimalist description gave her imagination little to paint of the place before she could finally see it with her own eyes.

Rising out of the sands like they were borne from the desert itself were a series of towers, rounded parapets each tipped with fierce silvery spikes that pierced the inky midnight sky above like needles. Connecting the perimeter walls of the ruins, the imposing spires framed the vast low palace within. The entire compound seemed to glow with an eerie light that illuminated its stones from the perpetual nighttime, like moonlight.

At the very front, the wall had crumbled to nothing but dust and rocks. They were the remains of a devastating intrusion a hundred years ago when Aizen first invaded this, the sacred – and original – seat of power in Hueco Mundo. Barragan had been the King of the Hollows then, but after a short-lived battle the Vasto Lorde had avoided a slaughter, wisely bending the knee to the Shinigami Captain and his small entourage. It was the downfall of Hueco Mundo's autonomy.

The palace before her was massive, its aura ancient and powerful. Appropriately, the place seemed haunted in its desolation, Orihime thought to herself. She wondered if it had been like that even before Aizen's invasion, considering that it was quite literally the palace of the living dead. She used her hands to rub the sudden chill from her arms.

Bawabawa dove back into the sands with nary a farewell to the two, but the human girl hardly noticed his departure as she eyed the immense structure before her with wonder and wariness. Grimmjow stood ahead, beholding the castle with a heavy sense of purpose, like he was about to take on a tremendous burden. She figured that was exactly the case; this would henceforth be his throne. Orihime studied his scowl, realizing she was beginning to tell his expressions apart now. She couldn't help the building admiration she had been feeling for the former Espada as he stood there, wide shoulders squared with such tremendous intensity, outlined by the soft glow of the ruins. His frown was one of outward introspection; he was taking in his future. The moment was powerful, and she was left somewhat speechless as she let him soak it up.

Now he just needed to unseat an evil Shinigami overlord and his army of powerful monsters.

Biting her lower lip, she tried to sort her emotions.

She owed so much to this force of nature personified before her. Yes, he'd helped her escape from her captivity in Las Noches, but more importantly…

He'd given her a sense of direction. She had ambition now, such that it was constantly evolving the more she came to know this Arrancar. Whereas before, she found loose inspiration in the plan to destroy the Hougyoku, there was now so much more to her ideals. She  _wanted_  this fierce man before her to succeed. Yes, he was dangerous, and violent, and his motives were still under question, but there was a strange purity to his purpose that she had not yet seen in any of the other Hollows – or Shinigami, for that matter – that she'd encountered in Hueco Mundo thus far.

As Grimmjow's feet began moving again, Orihime felt a strange stirring in her heart. A strange, unidentifiable warmth was curling its way into her belly as she watched him, and she was afraid to examine it too closely. Like the start of a new chapter, she could feel the page turning in the narrative that was their alliance.

She could follow him here, or perhaps she could just… go home. He was strong; surely he could manage this without someone as weak as she.

"Grimmjow…"

He stopped at the sound of his name on her lips and turned to see her upturned face, as if just remembering she was there. The expression he wore, though…

His frown was gone, replaced by a neutral, questioning look. It was a look she imagined he might give an equal.

The stirring in her heart exploded into butterflies in her stomach.

She bit her lip again and shook her head, as if the gesture could shake away the distraction. She gave him a small smile and spoke.

"Let's go."

He blinked once down at her, then let out a small hum of agreement, the corner of his lip quirking for a flash under his mask.

Orihime stuck close to him as he took those final strides toward his fate.

The small  _bala_  he released into the ruins blocking their way made her shriek, though.

"Wh-… What was that for?!" she exclaimed, hand to her chest as she tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.

Grimmjow turned to face her again. He kept a straight face at the rat's nest her hair had become.

"Clearing the mess. You don't actually expect me to waste my time climbing over all this shit, do you?" he said, as if it was obvious. He watched her make an incredulous face before turning around and continuing through the smoking clutter he'd created. Orihime scrambled to catch back up to him, tripping occasionally on rubble now hidden by the dust stirred up.

The former Espada wondered at her behavior as he walked toward his fate. He could tell something weighed heavily on her mind, but figured she would eventually talk about it if it bothered her for too long. She talked about everything else, after all.

He felt her small hands at his back every once in a while, catching herself as she stumbled over the wreckage. He allowed the contact, partly because he was happy that her instincts existed at  _all_  and kept her close to him in this dangerous place, but mostly because she was hot and he was an opportunist. He would take what he could get, he thought to himself with a sinister glint on his face.

The Arrancar could sense the eyes all around them, watching them from the shadows. Whether she knew it or not, her intuition was serving her well. This was not a welcoming committee here to greet them. These Hollows were what remained of the enormous contingent that once took up residence in this palace, and they were extremely wary of intruders. Grimmjow remained aloof as he continued forward.

"You feel them, don't you?" he whispered to the girl behind him. He felt her one hand clench in the back of his jacket, the fabric bunching in her grip.

"Yeah," she replied softly. "What... What are they?" she inquired. Her concerned eyes tried to reach their watchers in the shadows and failed.

"The rebellion," he answered her. She gasped softly. "They're the ones that remained behind when Barragan abandoned the throne for Aizen. They've been here, lurking, for the better part of a century. Ghosts of an era long past."

His low words drove a slow tingle up Orihime's spine as she watched the shadows dance beyond the rubble. The two of them had by now entered the compound completely, and their only way out was the way they'd come.

Suddenly, her senses screamed at her.

"Look out!"

Reacting immediately to both her voice and his own awareness to the threat, Grimmjow reached behind him and shoved her out of the way of a blast of acid. The sour-smelling liquid sizzled on the ground where they'd once stood, and he drew his sword.

The pregnant silence vanished as an eerie hum swelled all around them, the Hollows rising in excitement as one by one their siblings sprung to attack the intruders, pouring forth from the darkness. Grimmjow grit his teeth into a fierce grin as he prepared to retaliate.

He sprang into action.

Flying through the tangle of legs, he hacked at the forest of limbs surrounding him with Pantera. Crimson blood sprayed him as feral screeches of fury rained down around them both. He saw the glow of Orihime's shield and knew she had acted in time to protect herself.  _Good girl._

There was a smattering of Adjuchas-class Hollows in the group, and he strained his senses to ensure he maintained a pin on their respective locations.  _Seven? No, ten. Shit, how many of them_ are _there?_

" _It's been too long since I've tasted the blood of a traitor,_ " came a distorted voice from the shadows, where he knew two of the Adjuchas were. He snorted at the ill-concealed threat.

"Tch. Don't even start. I don't listen to diatribes from shit weaklings like you." His sword glinted in the eerie moonlight. "Now come closer so I can gut you, you peons."

"Grimmjow..." he heard the girl start from behind her golden shield. He did not even bother to look at her as he offered arrogant reassurance.

"This will be over fast, Princess. Just sit back and enjoy the show."

He took off.

Into the throng of Hollows he sprang, heedless of the encroaching shadows in which they hid. Perhaps they might have stood a chance if they were organized enough to coordinate an attack, but as they were they could do nothing against the former Sexta Espada. His sword flashed again and again as it bathed itself in the red of their defeat. He saw the glow from the girl's direction increase and knew she was diligently defending herself as he mounted his offensive.

"Grimmjow!" came her voice again.

The Arrancar ignored her, choosing instead to prioritize his distractions. He'd see what she wanted in a moment - after he'd dispatched these nuisances.

He grinned widely, a predatory look in his eyes as he swung Pantera down onto the head of the Adjuchas that spoke, intent on splitting the uppity fool in two.

His sword clanged loudly as it bounced off  _Santen Kesshun_ , vibrations shooting up his wrist uncomfortably. He could see the shock in the eyes of the Hollow beyond the triangular golden shield, the enemy well aware that its sudden and powerful appearance was the only reason he was alive.

"Please, everyone, stop."

The desperate tinge to her voice was the only thing stopping him from lashing out in a rage, furious that his destruction had been interrupted. Confusion seeped into his angered expression though, when he saw the healing glow of her  _Souten Kisshun_  bathing one of the Hollows he'd already cut through.

He was not the only one confused at this point. The drone from earlier had melted again into silence, breath held all around them as they waited for any forthcoming explanation.

"Grimmjow plans to overthrow Aizen," she explained as she caught her breath. She looked pleadingly to each Hollow in turn, wary lantern-like gazes lighting upon her from masks of all shapes and sizes. "He's here to take back Hueco Mundo."

The quiet didn't even last a moment before her words elicited murmurs and growls from the shadows.

A snakelike voice came from the feet of a tall dark column. " _And who does that make you, little human?_ " it asked cautiously, slitted red eyes hypnotized by the sight of her powers. Orihime belatedly realized the column it stood beneath was actually an immense Menos Grande, the disconcerting mask staring at her from far above. Mouth dry, she looked over and met Grimmjow's stony expression.

"I'm-..." What  _was_  she to him, actually?  _Think quick, mull later. Lives depend on this answer._ She never broke eye contact with the Arrancar as she answered.

"I'm his trump card."

She listened as the hum of voices swelled up again, but focused on the way Grimmjow's eyes narrowed on her. He was catching on, she could see it. She ignored the way the butterflies fluttered under his scrutiny; his stare was always unnervingly intense, she reminded herself.

"None of you should be fighting each other." Her voice sounded stronger than she felt. "You want the same thing, right? For Aizen to be stripped of his power and for Hueco Mundo to return to the control of a Hollow.  _Him,_ " she finished, pointing at Grimmjow.

By now he'd lowered his sword, its tip floating inches above the ground as the  _drip drip_ of blood landed on the stones below. He stood straight, but his posture was closed and defensive, chin tucked close to his chest and shoulders squared away as he eyed the pack of monsters now sizing him up, his own expression full of mistrust.

"I have the power to reject the  _Hougyoku_ , just like I'm rejecting your injuries and attacks," she explained as she waved back at her two shields, glowing golden on opposite sides of the courtyard, "and I am going to help Grimmjow-sama become king." She added the honorific in front of this new audience for his benefit.

"Will you help us? Or will you keep hiding here from the army in Las Noches?" she finished, adding extra weight to her final sentence as if to shame them.

A murmur of discontent spread like wildfire throughout those assembled, and a giddy little corner of her mind thought she might have convinced a few of them. She realized, as she watched the crowd practically shudder with impatience and festering excitement, that many of them probably knew  _exactly_  who Grimmjow was, and she did not have to convince them of his strength. She wrung her hands, though, when her gaze shifted to her companion. She thought to draw his eyes again, hoping she could make him turn by sheer willpower alone. He didn't.  _Why won't Grimmjow look at me?_

" _Not everyone will welcome you,_ " said a papery voice from behind. Orihime flinched at the hideously emaciated body of a Hollow like a little old lady with a mask like a crow's beak. A large Gillian, vaguely stag-like, towered over her like a sentry.  _She must be the leader here,_ the girl thought to herself. " _But we will let you pass, for now. Do not count on everyone jumping to your cause,_ " she directed at Grimmjow. " _Give them time to make the decision. You might just be an upstart, after all._ "

The former Sexta Espada did not react as the human expected him to and merely narrowed his eyes at the crone. Despite the fact that she was getting to know him better and better, she was sometimes surprised when his composure won out instead of what she would deem to be a characteristic outburst. She figured that would be the childish way to react. No matter how wild Grimmjow might seem, he certainly was no child, she reminded herself.

Then, as suddenly as they'd appeared all around them, the Hollows practically melted back into the shadows, disappearing from the perimeter of the courtyard and leaving the two alone once again.

Orihime deflated with a hollow exhale, her knees nearly giving out from under her despite the thrill from her successful interjection. They'd survived with minimal bloodshed – after all, she knew Grimmjow was capable of slaughtering them all with ease – and perhaps she'd even managed to earn Grimmjow some new allies. She was ecstatic, and she bit her lower lip as she brought her hands together in front of her. She felt like she owed herself some pampering. The girl wondered if there was a bath somewhere here in these ruins.

Orihime was jerked off her feet by the front of her dress. A grunt escaped her mouth as she was hauled up to Grimmjow's eye level, both her hands wrapping in fright around the one strangling the fabric of her outfit. She was a little scared by the sudden manhandling, but trusted Grimmjow enough to…

"Don't  _ever_  get in my way again," he threatened dangerously, halting her thought process. Orihime's blood ran cold in her veins as she felt his warning wrap around her like ice. He was deadly serious. His frigid, hateful gaze had her emotions in a whirlwind, her instincts telling her to  _run_  but her heart telling her this was her friend.

Her hands squeezed his one gently, pleadingly. "I- I'm sorry," she apologized, confused.

His face twisted into an ugly scowl as he let go of the front of her uniform, she still a foot off the ground. She landed silently, her eyes never leaving his face as he managed to look absolutely disgusted with himself. Her one hand came up to cover her hammering heart, the other to slide some strands of hair behind her ear.

"They won't bother us for a while. Go find a place in here where you want to set up camp; there might be some running water, still," he ordered lowly, his voice almost a growl.

"I'll be back later. Don't leave this place, period."

He turned and left, much as he used to do at the end of their meetings in Las Noches. She wondered, as she covered her eyes with trembling hands and tried to make order of the shambles of her feelings, if this was going to be the story of their relationship.

If so, she wasn't sure her blood pressure could handle it.

She shouldered her bag, hands still shaking as she reached down to pick it up, then turned to make her way further into the ruins.

She left behind nothing but silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer-than-usual chapter. Would love to hear what you have to say about the story thus far. *kiss*


	15. Curiosity Killed...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's way more interesting than he ever suspected.

When Grimmjow left Orihime, it was to hunt the presumptuous Adjuchas that she had stopped him from killing.

While he vaguely appreciated her attempt to sway the masses to his cause, she simply did not understand the more basic of laws of this land. Hueco Mundo was a Wild West, a dog-eat-dog, eat or be eaten sort of world. The Hollows may have marveled at her extraordinary powers, but it was still the simple, brutal assertion of strength that would cement their loyalty in the end, Grimmjow knew.

He ignored the chaotic sounds of madness all around him as his slaughter upended the Adjuchas’ pack hierarchy. As his bare hands ripped through flesh and incinerated with Ceros fired in short bursts, he bared his teeth in a wild grin, his eyes alight with bloodlust. He was clearly the new Alpha here, and these now-leaderless fools would come crawling to him and the girl in a few days at maximum.

They'd be the first. The rest would follow.

He later reflected on these thoughts as he cleaned his bloodstained sword, high up in the rafters above the unaware human girl's head. He studied the woman out of the corner of his eye, always curious. Always watching.

She had discovered the remains of some old aqueducts that ran through the ruined palace. While little more than a trough, the water was cold and clean, and far more than she'd seen since they'd left Las Noches.

Orihime had removed the short jacket covering the upper part of her dress, baring her slender shoulders to the chilly air. It was the most she'd take off here; she still didn't know what would come leaping out of the shadows at any minute. If her own ally was so unpredictable, then who was telling what else could surprise her.

Grimmjow watched as she gathered her plentiful hair over one shoulder and down her front, the elegant curve of her neck bared for his greedy eyes. She collected some of the sparkling water in her cupped hands and splashed her face, washing away some of the grime from the desert and freshening herself for the first time in days. Her relief was palpable, although she had no idea she had an audience.

When she was done, she shook out her jacket and folded it neatly, laying it next to her small satchel of random objects. Pulling out a crust of hard bread, she munched on it absently as she slowly took in her surroundings with tired eyes.

There was that look again, Grimmjow noted to himself.

Her graphite gaze took in the high-ceilinged room with an ancient weight that had the Espada itching to learn more. He recognized some time ago that she was far more intelligent than he’d given her credit for at the outset. Her personality was an extraordinary curiosity, and her quirks sometimes overshadowed what he was quickly realizing was a shrewd mind. She was beautiful, he easily admitted to himself as he slowly sheathed Pantera, but this look of hers also spoke of a deeply ingrained wisdom that he rarely witnessed from her, wont as she was to shove rainbows and kittens down his throat. He shuddered.

Orihime reacted with a start when Grimmjow landed next to her from out of nowhere. His stare was aloof, and she actually recognized the look that always preceded questioning from him. He liked to pretend to be less interested than he really was, she thought with cautious amusement. Cautious, because the girl still hadn't forgotten his earlier trespass against her person. She waited patiently for the inquiry to begin, eyes warm and waiting.

"What's your story, chick?"

The girl tilted her head to the side curiously. "My… story? What story?"

She watched as he lay his bloodthirsty _Zanpakutou_ – safely sheathed in its scabbard – on the floor before taking a seat on the bare stones himself. He sat with his legs spread in front of him, knees slightly bent and forearms resting atop them.

Orihime shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his new stare, suddenly the focus of his undivided attention. His eye color was  _so intense_ , and she always found it difficult to maintain contact. "Urk..."

"How exactly did you come about your powers? Were you born with fairies flying out of your ass, or did you grow into that habit?" He asked the question loudly, asserting a rather nonchalant mood while still making it evident that she held sole ownership of his curiosity. Orihime was cautiously optimistic that this conversation would not end with her having to readjust her wardrobe.

"The fairies don't fly out of... My butt," she corrected with a tinge of annoyance, "they fly out of my hairpins."

"Oh, yeah, that's way more badass," he said, rolling his eyes for emphasis and waving a hand in dismissal.

Orihime pouted. "They mean a lot to me. They were a gift from..." She trailed off, realizing she was about to reveal a great deal about herself to this man. Did she trust him enough to divulge such intimate details of her past? Had he earned any right to know?

"From...?" he prompted.

Her face was schooled in an uncharacteristic mask of expressionlessness. Even her lips felt numb, and he noted that she wasn’t nibbling on them with her teeth the way she usually did when she was thinking.

"My brother," she said quietly. Then, after a pause, "He died."

The Arrancar was silent, letting her decide whether she wanted to say more.

"Then he turned into a Hollow and tried to kill me," she told him bluntly. Grimmjow's brow spiked at the quick admission.

"Eh?” he said, dragging out the vowel. “Seriously?" The young woman merely nodded.

"Then he remembered me, and released himself from his curse. He stabbed himself with Kurosaki-kun's Zanpakutou and freed his soul."

For once, Grimmjow did not linger on the mention of his rival's name. His eyes were wide as he listened intently.  _Well. Seems like the princess isn't all sugar and spice after all._

He leaned back, threading his fingers behind his head, pretending to withdraw some of his attention else she believed him to  _actually_ be interested. "Bet Mommy and Daddy shit bricks when that happened." The girl merely blinked at him.

"I don't remember my mom and dad. Oniichan got us out of there when he turned eighteen and I was three; they weren't very good people," she explained as calmly as if she was updating Grimmjow on the weather forecast.

_You're kidding_. This was getting ridiculous. "So who the hell do you live with? Some wicked stepmother or something?" He wasn't actually expecting a sob story when he'd thought to ask. He figured perhaps the most tragedy she'd experienced in her life was a dying goldfish or something. This was much, even for him.

"I live by myself, of course," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I have a distant aunt that sends me stipends, but that's really only as long as I keep my grades up. She's not very nice, either, to tell the truth." Grimmjow merely gaped at the girl.

"How are you living alone? Aren't you, like, twelve?" _That was weak_ , the Hollow scolded himself. She  _definitely_  wasn't twelve, he thought as he eyed her chest straining against the white fabric of her dress' tube top. No  _child_  could have assets like that. He turned innocently toward the ceiling before Orihime could catch him staring.

"I am  _not_  twelve, thank-you-very-much," she confirmed, somewhat insulted. She stuck her nose in the air and crossed her arms defiantly across her front, missing the way his eyes darted back down to track the motion. "I'm sixteen years old."

“Huh. _Noted_.” His voice deepened with those two words, and Orihime felt her cheeks tingle. She ignored the feeling though, certain that any implications were merely being fabricated by her own imagination.

Grimmjow knew he could no longer dismiss the experiences in her short life. He wondered if his own forgotten lifetime contained even half as much tragedy, certain as he was that he had died older than her current age. And now, here they were, forcing the horrors of the afterlife into the mix. Poor girl… He'd feel sorry for her, if only the emotion resonated with him at all.

How in the world did she maintain such a positive outlook? She was certainly entitled to wallow in her misery, but instead she always tried to own her circumstances with sunshine and magic healing powers and…  _Hold on._

"Waitaminnute, you still haven't answered my question, you know. How the hell did you get your powers?" he reminded her, his voice animated.

Orihime liked the conversational nature of his tone and ventured to risk annoying him with a question of her own. "Nuh-uh, you got some backstory. Now it's my turn," she demanded, her voice soft but playful. Grimmjow tensed.

"What about you?" she asked curiously. The former Sexta Espada tensed and frowned warningly at her. Here she went again, trying to pry dangerously into his past. Didn't she ever learn? His lighthearted attitude was teetering precariously on the precipice of another mood swing.

"How do you keep your teeth so white? Even the ones on your mask are clean!"

Silence followed her question.

Grimmjow was not often at a loss for words. He was for once, though, left with his mouth slightly ajar as his jaw hung somewhat loosely.

_Huh?_

Well... That wasn't what he had been expecting at all. He gave the girl a shred more credit. It seemed she could be a better student of his reactions than he'd suspected.

He regained his composure immediately. Keeping the conversation light, he continued what had become his unspoken apology. He was still conflicted over his earlier manhandling of the girl.

With a predatory glint in his eye, he answered her. "I chew on the bones of my prey. The habit just happens to maintain my dental hygiene," he growled, his graphic wording softened by the almost seductive way he said it.

Orihime felt ill at his admission, despite the way his voice made her want to curl her toes with an unfamiliar sensation. That was…  _gross_ , but gosh, did he make it sound good. A rosy pink dusted her cheeks as she raised her eyes to meet his own.

He was  _teasing_ her, she realized by the look he was giving her. Her own lips quirked up in amusement as her blush washed away. "You're such a liar," she accused with a laugh. As his grin spread across his face, she reached over and playfully swatted at his leg nearest hers.

The action had been natural, she thought with some fright after it had happened, and it was too late to take it back. Her heart stilled in her chest and her mouth suddenly went dry as she looked back up into his face, eyes wide like saucers in her own.  _I shouldn't have done that._

But he had turned away from her to look elsewhere, evidently deep in thought. She was presented with his profile, free of the bony obstruction that adorned his other cheek. There was nothing to show that he'd even noticed her contact.

Here, in the dancing torchlit glow of the medium-sized chamber, he looked almost human. The eerie moonlight illuminated what the soft flames did not, and his unrealistic hair almost passed for dirty blonde. He sat here with her, all friendly banter and listening ears and _normalcy._ It was almost like there was no Las Noches, no Seireitei, no Shinigami and Aizen and Hougyoku, but instead just a young man and woman enjoying one another’s company. Not for the first time, Orihime wondered what Grimmjow was like as a living man as her gaze softened on him. Had he been anything like this? She thought she might have grown to truly like a person like that.

Yet despite the fact that she was finally enjoying his company again, and she had so much still to learn about this man, she recognized this excellent stopping point for what it was. It was about time they ended an encounter on a high note again, after all. No more strangling for her,  _no thank you._

"I think I'm going to turn in. It's been an… eventful day," she declared with a long sigh.

Grimmjow snapped out of his reverie to acknowledge her again, a soft "Hm?" in his throat. "Right," he said when he'd processed her words and stood to leave. Then, not one to miss the opportunity to take a jab, "You needy humans and your habit of  _sleeping_." It was a weak attempt at continuing his earlier teasing, but she smiled slightly at the effort.

"Goodnight, Grimmjow," she said softly, dismissing him whether he realized it or not.

He paused in the doorway before stepping all the way out, and she wondered if he would return the farewell this time.

He departed, and the silent shadows swallowed him as one of their own.

Orihime sighed before rolling over and falling asleep.


	16. "The Farther I Fall..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Circumstances have Grimmjow in a lousy mood, and only Orihime is around to suffer the brunt of the consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was birthed directly from comments made by Orihime to Chad back in chapter 546 of the manga while they were training at the Negal Ruins. I am a firm believer that if circumstances permit, then as many parallels as possible should be drawn between my fanfic and the canon storyline. It helps me keep folks in-character, and it keeps me honest. And frankly, Orihime's vision in that chapter made me think that KT hasn't entirely forgotten the deep emotional bond the woman has with Hueco Mundo and the Hollows.

Grimmjow had been more irritable than usual lately.

While Orihime considered things to be relatively smoothed between them, she could not help but notice that he was more prone to confrontation, whether violent – against Hollow challengers – or verbal – with her.

New followers had been trickling in throughout the day, but the numbers were far fewer than he had hoped for by this point. She knew this frustrated him, but she wished he would curtail his aggression and let things play out a bit. He’d waited long enough for this; surely he could endure for a while more.

She was a very patient and forgiving young woman, but sometimes his abrasiveness disagreed with her, and she would tire of trying to cater to his carnival ride of mood swings.

The girl was sitting atop a stone staircase on the outside of the compound, wanting to take a break from its confinement. She kept knees tucked under her chin as she stared off thoughtfully into the nighttime desert. Grimmjow had noted her absence and walked out from the cover of the Negal Ruins to find his missing companion, a heavy scowl marring his features.

While she understood he wasn’t wearing it because of her, she also knew it meant his temper was a volcano ready to erupt. She wondered if it gave him a headache.

After noticing her, he strolled over without haste, stopping at Orihime's side and joining his ally as she continued her silent contemplation. He didn't bother to look down at the woman, instead scanning the sands reflectively and waiting for her to speak. It did not take too long.

"It's so peaceful," she said softly.

Grimmjow furrowed his brow even more deeply in confusion and finally turned to the perplexing girl. "And how the hell do you figure that?" he asked her, annoyed. Orihime was almost amused by how little she needed to do to ignite his irritation this time. Instead she plowed on, at the moment indifferent to censoring her thoughts. She was relatively certain that he’d find a reason to be pissed off by whatever she had to say anyway, so she decided to share what was on her mind.

Grimmjow interrupted her before she could continue though, and started ticking off on his fingers.

"You're running for your life from a being who's sworn to defend you," he said, referring to Aizen's former role as a Shinigami captain, "in a world full of monsters that want to eat you. Explain to me what's so peaceful about that." This girl’s absurd reasoning could tick him off so thoroughly, sometimes.

Orihime did not look at him as she hugged her knees to her chest and followed a thoughtful silence with a quiet explanation.

"Yet, despite all that, I'm here with you, aren't I? Two supposedly natural enemies," she pointed out. Her eyes softened on some undefined point along the dark horizon. "I'm spending time here just as easily as I could spend it during a struggle in Soul Society or the world of the living. No one is attacking us right now, and we're working together and protecting each other and  _getting along._ We're proving that Hollows and humans don't necessarily have to be at odds with each other all the time." She paused momentarily, curtailing the passion building in her heart for this imaginary Elysium.

"I just... I just wish it could go on like this forever, us helping each other like this. No bloodshed, no fighting. Just... Balance. Peace."

She had felt like this for a while now, she’d realized. Ever since Grimmjow became her ally, and especially once she started considering him her _friend_ , Orihime came to feel that the relationship she had with him was one of the most natural, unforced things in her life. She wasn’t warring between admiration and jealousy like she sometimes did with Rukia, and she wasn’t craving his attention like she did with Kurosaki-kun. In fact, if she had to compare her relationship to Grimmjow with that of anyone else’s, she would have to say it most closely resembled what existed between her and Tatsuki.

They were both so different yet still so compatible. Tatsuki was the dragon to her princess, and she would do anything for her fierce best friend. Their loyalty to one another was matched only by their faith in each other.

Grimmjow possessed that same determinedness she so admired in her best friend. Beyond his physical strength and his battle prowess and his ambition, he had a certain pure simplicity to him at his core. He, though, was a slave to his passions, and his complexities lay in his drive. He consistently hungered for _something_ , and Orihime wondered if that was a result of the hole in his center or if he had been that way all along.

He was like Tatsuki, if she had been male and _feral_ and missing something so critical in her soul that Orihime’s heart broke for it.

An ice-cold chill ran down her spine and she tensed up slightly as she felt Grimmjow's  _reiatsu_  grow and curl across her skin menacingly, like smoke. Her brow furrowed slightly in challenge, but she still refused to look at him and his bothered reaction until she felt him crouch next to her and tightly grab her chin in the fingers of one hand. He forced her to look at him.

She met furious blue eyes, cold yet sparking like lightning inches from her face. She did not expect such a reaction from him, but defiantly met his expression regardless of the threat he was trying to pose.

"Don't you fucking get complacent with me, you weak fool of a human," he raged silently, pushing into her personal boundaries and causing her to unfold from her position, unbalanced. She caught herself with her hands as he forced her to tip backward somewhat. His fury intensified when she merely continued to stare back, showing no fear. He towered over her average frame and said, "Don't you forget that I could kill you whenever the thought occurs to me, you little bitch. You're  _nothing_ ," he hissed in a demonstrative show of dominance.

The corners of her lips tilted downward as she scanned his facial expression and read his mixed messages. He was angry, yes, but Orihime wasn't so sure he was angry at  _her_. He'd demonstrated a rollercoaster of emotions since she'd known him, and she was hard-pressed to figure out exactly what his triggers were. She knew she was consistently making the former Espada have to revisit his usual way of doing business, and that had to have been driving him crazy.

She resolutely refused to let him threaten her for it anymore, though. She realized how much she frustrated him, and she recognized how thoroughly she was turning his ideals and attitudes upside down, but...

Wasn't he doing the same to her? And...

She didn't hate him for it.

Frowning, she looked him directly in the eye. Making a decision then and there and invoking a certain risk, she said something that shocked him to his empty center.

"You won't hurt me."

Before she could gauge his reaction, his large hand shot up to wrap itself firmly around her delicate throat, his threat wordless and evident. She winced as his grip tightened, but remained resolute in her challenge. Her comparatively small hands rose to grasp his own, her fingers desperately pressing into the cold _hierro_ that was his skin. Hard as it was, it was pliant, and she knew he felt the pressure by the twitch in his eyes. She refused to back down as she stared back up into his furious eyes.

Grimmjow was struggling. He wanted to make his point, but Orihime was clearly not intimidated by his violence anymore. He was the Espada of Destruction, yet his defining aspect could do nothing to sway this worthless little human girl's opinion of him. His grip tightened even more, and he knew he was making it difficult for her to breathe.

For weeks now, this young woman had been worming her way into the heart he didn't have. At first he had no problem with it; she was an amusing curiosity, and there was a sense of mutual loyalty there. Recently, though...

He respected power. He demanded respect. And this damned girl had... Both, he realized. In abundance. His hand trembled around her throat as his mind was wracked with unfamiliar indecision.

He was fucked.

His grip loosened slightly, opening Orihime's airway again and letting her breathe freely. His hand stayed on her neck for a moment as he kept staring at her both relieved and increasingly beseeching face. Her warm hands were still wrapped around his own, and he resisted the strange desire to hold them, instead. Her lips were full, pouting slightly as color rushed back into them along with the breath in her lungs, and her eyes were wide and glistening and imploring and  _so easy_  to read.

She was a fucking temptress and didn't even know it.

Electric eyes locked on her lips as if about to make an important decision, and Grimmjow realized he was at a loss.

Orihime was kind, charismatic, and deceivingly insightful. She was energetic, imaginative, and the damned prettiest thing he'd seen in ages. She was powerful.

He couldn't taint that.

He cursed under his breath and shot back to his feet. He escaped back into the maze of ruins so fast that Orihime's head spun, and he disappeared from her sight.

The girl let out a shuddering breath as her hands raised to her own neck. Her eyes fluttered closed, and tears lined her lower lids as her emotions brimmed to the edge.

Nothing would be the same anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the relationship between Orihime and Tatsuki, and I really miss it in the manga. Orihime is so easy for everyone to want to protect, but I think a lot of that is because she genuinely wants to protect everyone right back. *has Orihime feels*


	17. "...I'm Beside You"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow is late.
> 
> Grimmjow is not okay with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was always my favorite chapter. Excited to finally scrub it and post here.
> 
> (Why am I so mean to Orihime?)

Orihime resisted the ugliness of reality as consistently as it would allow her.

Kindness and friendship always won out, she reminded herself often. An unfettered imagination could blot out the cruelties of life with bright splotches of color in a gray world.

Unfortunately, there were times when reality was just too ugly to be painted over by fantasy and naivety. This, much to her horror, was one of those times.

She didn't know where Grimmjow was. After his abrupt departure a few hours ago, Orihime left the stone staircase in favor of practicing her powers on the sands below, her face the picture of melancholy. Ayame and Shun’ō were silent as they worked at the light bruising on her neck. Tsubaki, however, behaved in no such way. He spat and cursed as he blasted through practice pillars at Orihime’s behest, and Shun’ō’s frown reflected similar displeasure as he sat on her shoulder. The training kept her mind from worrisome thoughts of earlier, no matter how loudly Tsubaki’s threats of bodily harm against the Arrancar tried to yank her back.

The once welcome distraction proved disastrous, however.

Where Grimmjow was mattered little, now. All that mattered was that he wasn't here, and this horrifying Hollow was.

Reeking with the pungent odor of decay, the monster looked like it had come straight out of her nightmares. A mantle of mossy, matted fur covered its shoulders ten feet above her head. Six spindly legs tipped with dark cloven feet supported the emaciated body, while two long arms ending in hands of cruel talons hovered over its head.

And what a head it was.

When the monster burst from the sand beneath her feet, she was painfully knocked on her bottom. It rose, higher and higher until it towered over her fallen form, and she had to crane her neck to look up and into its face with wide, fearful eyes.

The Hollow's skull reminded her of a Noh mask, hauntingly expressionless and with that eerily porcelain beauty they were so known for. She was mesmerized for a moment, staring into the gleaming emptiness where there should have been eyes.

Then, the mask split down the middle with a thunderous crack, and rows upon vertical rows of dangerous fangs gaped at her, dripping toxic venom like a foaming, rabid beast. Just before Orihime rolled and scrambled away with a scream, she caught a glimpse of many long, prehensile tongues snaking out of the maw of this monster, each tipped with cruel vicelike pincers. Her blood curdled at the horrendous shriek that spilled from the creature.

" _Look_! Look! What a treat, _look!_ " The voice hissed up her spine, and the fear in her heart doubled. "What a  _delicious_  looking little girl,  _look!_ " Her pulse pounded in her head, her throat, and her gut as she crawled madly on her hands and knees through the sand, the traitorous grains slipping from under her and affording her no purchase for momentum. The cursed voice was flooded with a hungry madness, both high and low, clear and muddled. She felt the tears gather at the corners of her eyes as she tried to escape it.

A massive taloned hand descended toward her quickly. She reacted.

The golden barrier exploded between her and the monster, protecting her from its touch and sending the Hollow into another fit of screams. "Look!  _Golden!_ What beautiful light, little girl!" it exclaimed in stark contrast to its agonized wails. Strange; it was almost as if there were two voices, she thought to herself.

That's when she felt the second set of jaws close around her left leg. She screamed as she felt the conical teeth pierce through the cloth of her skirt. Orihime could already feel her warm blood start seeping down her thigh as the crocodilian muzzle yanked her out from under the protection of her defensive shield, the glowing triangle vanishing as she was whisked from it.

What she'd originally thought was a stubby reptilian tail was actually a second mouth, altogether.

The jaws flung her upward, releasing her into the three-fingered talons above. They slammed her back into the ground before the creature's masked face, and the wind left her lungs as she impacted the cushioned sand.

Then, one of the creature's six cloven hooves stomped on her left leg, breaking her tibia right below the knee.

Her scream ripped through her throat as a pain like she'd never felt before radiated from the break and up her side. Her brain felt like it was going to explode like the stars behind her eyes. This was bad. This was very, very bad. There was not enough room in her mind to fit both the fear and the agony, when suddenly one thought pushed out everything else.

After everything, after all that she had been through, she was about to die. It was going to be painful, and it was going to be gruesome, and it was going to be _pointless_ , but most importantly…

…She was going to die all alone.

And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

She cried out with the first thing that came to her upon that realization.

"Gr-" she tried. Orihime couldn't put together a single word, much less an entire sentence through the agony engulfing her. The broken name escaped her lips, just as the oozing jaws began their final descent. "G-Grimmjow!"

If she thought it was pandemonium before, then what came next was nothing less than sheer chaos.

He came at the monster like a tornado from nowhere, all fury and rage and retribution.

Orihime didn’t quite know when the Hollow released her. She was only sure that suddenly, in a moment, the hoof was off her leg and her arm stung with the carving graze of the monster’s sharp talons as they were whisked off her. She struggled to take in larger breaths, her lungs still collapsed from her earlier impact.

Through the blur of her tears, she watched as a streak of blue and flesh and white pummeled the creature's face in with his fists, mercilessly pounding every square inch of the Hollow that he could reach with a loss of control she'd never witnessed before from him. The look in Grimmjow’s widened eyes was crazed, and she could see the vein pop from his temple. His jaw was clenched so tightly, she feared he might shatter his bared teeth.

The roars and shrieks from the Hollow were growing increasingly desperate as it tried in vain to fight back. Grimmjow clearly wasn't just trying to defeat this weaker enemy; he was trying to make it suffer horribly. His furious grip latched on to one of its arms, and Orihime watched as he _ripped_ it messily off its body, the muscles in his forearm and neck bulging with the physical effort of tearing ligament from bone. He tossed the severed limb carelessly in the distance.

In a final bid at intimidation, the Hollow split its own mask down the middle again, trying to get at Grimmjow with its horrible rows of oozing, serrated teeth. It shrieked, high-pitched and shrill.

Grimmjow's upper lip rose in a ferocious snarl as he wrapped one powerful hand around each vertical jaw, heedless of the bladed fangs that were shredding his fingers in the effort.

With a furious cry, he ripped the jaws apart from one another, effectively splitting the Hollow's head in two and delivering it to its final death instantly.

The massive body shuddered for a moment, then teetered before finally falling on its side in the sand in a heap. He stood over his kill, shoulders moving up and down as he breathed hard. The corpse twitched one last time before dissolving away into a pile of colorless ash with a tired hiss.

Orihime watched his back with wide, desperate eyes. He saved her. She called, and he'd saved her. She wanted to say she couldn’t believe it, but that was not quite right because she _knew_ he would come for her. She'd needed him, and he came, and she was in so much pain but it was okay because he  _came._

When he finally turned, she had no idea what emotion filled her eyes, but it was enough for most of the tension to melt from his shoulders. His fierce gaze softened as much as it ever did, and he approached her swiftly but carefully. She tried to identify the emotions brewing behind the storm of his eyes, but it was difficult. The only things she could surely catch a trace of were fury and regret.

"Are you okay?" he asked her as he dropped to one knee at her side. He looked at her face as he asked the question, ignoring her injuries in favor of hearing her answer.

Orihime's eyes welled with tears again as her plaintive gaze moved from his intense look down to the crippling injury she sustained. "My l-leg," she started, unable to wrap a complete thought around the reality as the pain returned full-force.

She felt his strong hand on her cheek, his fingers already healing on their own, pulling her concentration away from her injury and back to Grimmjow's face. "Look at me," he told her firmly, calmly. She swallowed hard. "I said look at me, Orihime," he said more softly. He said her name so rarely that it caught her attention. The Arrancar spared a quick, critical glance at her injury, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She felt his thumb shift gently on her face, reminding her without words to keep watch of him. When she opened her eyes, his blue gaze locked with hers again.

"It's a compound fracture, okay?" he explained delicately, his deep voice stern and calming all at the same time. Clinical, even. "That son of a bitch got you pretty good."

"It hurts so much," she breathed, crushing her eyes shut again. She couldn't move her toes in that foot. Her hands had found his jacket, and she was clinging to him as if he could disappear at any moment. His arm was in her vice-like grip, made stronger by her pain. Stranger still was the fact that he allowed it.

"You need to heal it, dumbass. It'll stop hurting then," he said gently, without ire. She was trembling from the pain, adrenaline still coursing through her body even as she kept losing blood.

"I don't know if I can," she whispered honestly, turning her head and burying her face in his shoulder. He scoffed softly.

"Of course you can stupid. Just don't concentrate on the pain." He rumbled mirthfully, "You'll look like an idiot if you walk around for the rest of your life with your bone sticking out of your leg."

He wasn't funny at all, she decided.

Her eyes were still squeezed shut as she clung to Grimmjow there in the sand and tried to think of anything but the pain. He was wrapped around her now, she thought distantly, avoiding moving her leg at all while maintaining as much contact as he could. It was strange, she thought, how she liked the feeling.

She focused her attention on his proximity. One strong arm wrapped around the back of her shoulders while the other allowed her to cling desperately. Her face was still buried in his jacket, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. He smelled of musk and man and fresh sweat from his desperate battle with the Hollow just now. She remembered the electrified look in his eyes when he was attacking the monster, as if it had committed a sin so enormously egregious, and he was the demon there to extract its penance.

He had looked so scared.

Orihime deflated with a deep exhale, and her head cradled itself in the crook beneath his chin and chest, nestled against his neck. Two Shun Shun Rikka burst forth from her hairclips, erecting a healing shield around her mangled leg. She felt Grimmjow's grip relax in relief.

But his arms stayed securely around her until long after her magic was done, and she couldn't find it in her to complain one bit. She fell asleep there in his embrace, and her final thoughts before succumbing to unconsciousness were that she was the luckiest trump card in the whole world, and whether or not it was inappropriate to fall in love with a guardian angel.


	18. "As Lost as I Get..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first posted this story at FF.net, I asked readers to provide me with some drabble prompts in their reviews. Not a single one is a true, 100-word drabble, but I had a whole lot of fun doing it (and was very grateful for their usefulness in driving the plot). This chapter delivered the first half of them; expect the rest in chapter 20.

_mesmerized_ :

It was rare for Orihime to catch the Espada in slumber. Usually, she would be the first to succumb to the lure of the dream world, and she expected that he drifted off only after she was sound asleep.

But as she ascended the stone steps, she took notice of his blue-crowned head, chin tucked comfortably against his chest while his arms wrapped possessively around Pantera. He was propped against a column, clearly strategically seated so that he might see an incoming threat from all directions.

Or, she observed, so that he could watch over her as she explored the grounds.

Smiling softly, she neared quietly, eyes locked thoughtfully on his neutral face. His thick blue eyelashes, darker than the hair atop his head, fanned over the teal markings under his eyes, and Orihime couldn't help but note once again, pointlessly, that the two colors clashed terribly. His bony mask was locked in a permanent snarl, but the left side of his face was smooth, barely a trace of the lines that could mark his age had he been alive. She wondered how old he must have been when he died. There was no trace of stubble on his marble cheek, and she figured that perhaps Hollows' hair never changed. She never saw him do anything as mundane as shaving, after all, although she would have found it as fascinating as watching him brush his teeth.

His chest was still as she approached, and she thought with some sadness that he didn't need to breathe. Nearly upon him now, she neatly folded her legs and squatted next to him, fascinated by the Arrancar's rare state. Yesterday’s injury was nothing more than a nightmarish memory, fading into her compartmentalized past along with Yammy’s backhand and her brother’s bite.

Her eyes skimmed all over his features, drinking him in this way in case she wouldn't be able to again. Here, like this, she didn't think he was an angel  _or_ a demon, but instead a human man with a hole in his heart and a hunger in his soul.

She watched, and she wondered.

_caught:_

"You'd better not be thinking about touching my face," Grimmjow growled, voice heavy with lethargy.

Orihime squeaked and started backpedaling, only to immediately fall on her backside in an ungraceful heap. "Eh?! I-… I thought you were sleeping!"

One eye cracked open, the electrifying blue of his iris shocking Orihime with some embarrassment at being caught staring so brazenly. "I hear pictures last longer," he said. She flushed at being teased. _He’s probably never even_ seen _a camera! Dumb… old… old guy!_

"I thought you were sleeping," she repeated. "Sorry," she mumbled.

Grimmjow shifted, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees as he eyed the flustered girl. She heard his joints pop and regretted waking him.

"The dead don't need to sleep, stupid."

Orihime froze, shocked. "What?" she asked dumbly. "But… I thought… all those times!"

Grimmjow cracked his neck, making her wince at the noise. "It's a nice-to-have, not a necessity. I can get tired, like if I'm running all over the place saving your ass. But sleep?" He shrugged his shoulders as he rubbed a hand along his neck. "There's no point in it for the dead."

And as her eyes followed the graceful physicality of his waking routine, Orihime couldn't help but just accept it, as she did so many things, because in the end…

It made a lot of sense.

 _storm_ :

Orihime was amazed by the number of lesser Hollows that seemed to flock to them as the days passed. Most recently, a tiny toad Hollow had made its home on a perch atop her shoulder. Having determined it to be – surprisingly – harmless, she began taking it with her everywhere, much to her Arrancar’s annoyance.

When Grimmjow neared to look at it closely, she couldn't help but blush at his proximity. The handsome maskless side of his face was inches from her own as he frowned at the tiny amphibian.

"You know, you really need to stop bringing home all these strays- Gah! Mother-… Fucker!" He held one hand over his eye and scrambled backward as the little Hollow retracted its long black tongue, the sticky appendage returning with a  _pop!_  into its toothless mouth.

Orihime covered her snorting laughter with both hands, tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. The toad croaked innocently. Grimmjow stormed away, potent curses spilling from his lips as his hand covered his face.

_sunlight:_

Grimmjow wondered once if the endless night affected her. He vaguely remembered a time, foggy like a dream, when his sunkissed living flesh would thrive on a dose of the sun's radiant warmth and a warm breeze laced with salt.

Then, one day, as his eyes reflected the golden glow of her  _Souten Kisshun_  wrapped softly around a minor injury he'd sustained, he took back the thought.

She  _was_  the sun.

_whipped:_

"I'm gonna kill you, you little beast," Grimmjow threatened as he stalked up to the little toad, alone while the girl left to bathe. It did not budge an inch as he made his predatory approach, murder on his mind. Its vacuous, bulbous gaze blinked at him through elliptical pupils.

He slowly reached out a powerful hand, fingers curled like claws promising carnage.

It croaked.

"Grimmjow, stop!" The former Espada's shoulders hunched guiltily in reaction to the girl's voice, caught red-handed inches from his enemy.

The toad Hollow hopped to Orihime's side.

"Poor Gama-kun. Is Grimmjow being a bully?" The little beast croaked again, as if in response. She bent to pick it up, hair damp and assets nearly spilling out of her tube top. Grimmjow made a noise off to the side.

"Suck-up," he mumbled under his breath, arms crossed as petulance replaced guilt.

Orihime glared at the Arrancar before whirling away and back into the adjacent chamber, the toad gathered in her arms protectively. Grimmjow put on a pout, the expression soured by his trademark scowl.

 _supportive_ :

Bawabawa whispered something to Dondochakka before returning to the hive in his mouth with a burst of flashy light. Then, like a game of telephone, the Tiki-faced Arrancar leaned over to speak to Pesche, who then bent over to whisper into Nel's tiny ear.

"Itsyugo," whined the little girl, something serious in her infantile tone as it echoed in this empty chamber of Las Noches.

"What?" barked the orange-haired boy at the little Arrancar as she climbed up his  _hakama_ to her perch on his shoulder. She raised a pudgy hand to his ear as if to tell him a secret.

"The pwincess is in anudder castle."

_cheerleader:_

Tsubaki blasted through a series of columns in the ruined courtyard, completely eradicating all the stone within his circular path of destruction.

The toad Hollow seemed to have found a permanent home on Orihime's left shoulder, so her offensive fairy alighted on the sleeve pouf of her opposite side.

"I got through six more than yesterday," her tiny, black-garbed partner remarked happily. "We're getting better at this." Orihime nodded enthusiastically. The toad croaked at nearly being unseated.

"Not bad, pipsqueak," came a familiar voice from the sidelines, catching all three unawares. Orihime turned to see Grimmjow leaning casually against a column, sharp eyes on her one Shun Shun Rikka. "I expect you to get through five more tomorrow."

Tsubaki gave him the finger. Grimmjow merely smirked, then turned to leave again.

_inspire:_

"So… why 'king'? Wouldn't that be a ton of work?"

Grimmjow looked down and out of the corner of his eye at her as he contemplated the question, picking something out of his teeth with his pinky finger.

"Have you always been an underachiever, or is this a rhetorical question?" he asked while he examined imaginary food under his nail.

Orihime blushed and turned away, grumbling under her breath.

_pride:_

Ignoring the din of the monsters all around then, Grimmjow looked out across the churning crowds, face stoic and eyes glinting with his well-concealed excitement. Now  _this_  was an army. Then, he glanced down at the base of the rubble pile he stood upon and at his trump card.

She was already looking at him, and when he met her slate eyes he finally allowed a tiny smile. She was, after all, the reason this was happening at all.

_enchanted:_

If Tsubaki was the headstrong one of the bunch, then Lily was the conniving one, Grimmjow noted.

Orihime had been practicing her  _Santen Kesshun,_ effectively blocking a full-power attack by one of the Adjuchas-level Hollows that had recently joined their group. The Arrancar had been supervising their skirmish critically, both gauging the girl's progress and ensuring her safety against her somewhat unpredictable opponent.

The battle over, he watched as the triangle of her shield disintegrated, two of the corners flying directly back to their places in her hairpins. One of the fairies, though, diverted.

His vision was filled with bright sunglasses and pink hair as the tiny woman flew right up to his face. He recoiled at her unexpected approach, almost cross-eyed.

"She's getting good at this, isn't she?" said the little fairy. He didn't like the way she was waggling her eyebrows at him.

"Go away," he said with a grunt. He waved his hand in front of his face, but she merely dodged it.

"Aw. You're no fun," she said with a pout. "I really don't get what she sees in you. Besides the fact that you're hot."

Grimmjow sputtered. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Get out of my face." He swatted ineffectually at the fairy again.

"She deserves way better than you, you know. She's pretty, smart, funny, and has, like, that Ichigo kid wrapped around her little finger," she said loudly, counting items off on her digits. Grimmjow didn't  _have_ to know she was stretching the bit about Kurosaki-kun.

"That's  _enough_ ," he growled, having finally reached the limit of his patience. That comment about Kurosaki was the last straw. He didn't want to hear that; it was bad enough that Orihime used to go all starry-eyed at the mere mention of his name. He didn't need to think that the boy might have felt the same way _._

Lily crossed her arms and harrumphed in his face. "Just remember that next time you're thinking about  _ravishing_  her, hmm?" Grimmjow nearly choked again, and he was ready to smack the fairy out of the air. Unfortunately for his timing, she used that moment to wink at him and vanish, returning to her home in Orihime's hairpins.

Grimmjow had to adjust his focus for a second time when the disappearing fairy revealed an inquisitive human girl, her slate eyes blinking curiously at the Arrancar. He made an unbecoming, helpless noise at her proximity.

"Sorry if she was bothering you. She can be a little ridiculous sometimes," she said with some embarrassment, unaware of the nature of their conversation. "Is... Is everything okay?" she asked with a concerned glance.  _Is he..._ blushing _?_

Sure enough, the color stood out particularly well against the teal of the markings under his eyes, and Orihime couldn't believe her own.

She didn't have long to admire the uncharacteristic response when he turned away from her, mumbling something unintelligible under his breath and escaping quickly.

"...Huh," was all she could manage to say.


	19. "...I Will Find You"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I actually rewrote this entire chapter because I was supremely dissatisfied with the original version.

“Wake up,” Orihime heard his deep voice command, at the same time feeling the tip of his solid boot prod her side.

“Mmrrrgffff,” she said smartly. She pulled the thin blanket over her head, blocking Grimmjow out and hoping he got the hint.

The blanket was whisked away in a single, breezy movement.

“Eee!” she squealed unhappily, jolted by the frigid desert night air. She had been using her jacket as a pillow, therefore her arms and shoulders were bared to the cold.

“Get up, Princess!” he scolded, the derision evident in his tone. He hated her dallying even more than he hated her humanity. Mornings with this chick were impossible.

“Griiimmjooowww!” Orihime whined. The Hollow raised his lip in a disbelieving sneer when he watched her _roll_ on her side toward him and across the stone floor, landing atop his shoes. She wrapped her whole self around his ankles as if she could leech heat from there, tangling herself in the flimsy sheet again. His left brow ticked.

Nearly tipped off-balance by her clinginess, he bent over to try and detach her. She was stuck fast.  He wasn’t quite annoyed enough with her to use any of his brutal strength, much to her good fortune, so she continued playing up the silly moment.

“You’re already awake, stupid. Getoffa me and stop wasting the day away.” He sounded like such a _parent_ , she thought through her muddled morning reasoning.

“Nuh-uh,” said her muffled voice from within the billows of his hakama. As much as she would rather be asleep right now, she could not help the slight giddiness that was bubbling up within her. Grimmjow would _never_ have let her get away with behavior like this before, she thought as her mind cleared some.

“You’re such a little turd,” he said, and she almost thought she could trace a note of affection in the insult. She peeked up at him with one eye as he lowered himself to a seat, realizing he didn’t quite care if he extricated himself or not.

When he noticed she was making eye contact, he raised a single brow as if to ask her to kindly _get the fuck off_. His gaze glinted with playfulness, though, and her own eye creased with a smile at the challenge.

The butterflies were fluttering wildly in her stomach. She recognized quite readily at this point that she was undeniably _flirting_ with Grimmjow, and maybe had been for a while now. It was all innocence on her part, but the nervous patter of her heart forced her to examine her own behavior for exactly what it was. The fact that he allowed it, though, was igniting this endless desire in her for _more._

But this was _Grimmjow_ , she reminded herself. She buried her face once again in the mix of fabric before her.

Orihime bit her lip before finally unwrapping herself from around his ankles. She stretched languidly as she tried to ignore these feelings, forcing her mind back down to earth and out of the clouds filled with thoughts of what certainly could not be. Schooling her expression into one of neutrality instead of attraction, or – dare she think it – disappointment, she finally sat up to begin the day, nearly hip-to-hip with the Hollow as she reached her arms to the ceiling.

He glanced away from her, and the movement was so abrupt that she could not help but think there was a reason for it. She looked around him to find what might have caught his eye.

“What?” she asked in curious inquiry. She saw nothing.

When she returned her gaze to his face, Orihime froze.

Grimmjow was looking at her again from beneath hooded lids and thick eyelashes, but this time all of the playfulness was gone. It was instead replaced with something else, something foreign that she had been catching on his face more and more often. It was the kind of look that took her imagination to raw dimensions it was not accustomed to, and she could feel it scorching her body from her head to her toes, to other places she’d rather not think too long about.

She felt her throat tighten and her tongue leaden as she looked up into his eyes, braving their intensity in order to see this moment through. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but she knew it was significant. His lids were half lowered and his pupils were somewhat dilated, softening the usual iciness of his irises.

Her heart pounded with such an intensity that she could feel each individual _ba-dump_ as it blasted heat through her ears and throat and cheeks. She felt lightheaded as she scanned his face, the snarling chunk of bone on his cheek less intimidating than the gentle pout of his lower lip, only slightly parted as she caught a glimpse of the straight white teeth they hid. The heat was coiling low in her belly, and the butterflies fluttered high, telling her that instinct wouldn’t lead her astray no matter what her brain was trying to tell her right now.

He was close. She did not realize it was happening until he was already right there, and by that point it was like she was caught by gravity or _something._

His name was on her lips like a whisper of leaves.

“Grimm…jow?”

Her voice was like the toll of a clock breaking the spell. Grimmjow blinked once, his eyes roving her face as if just realizing where he was. His frown deepened, and his gaze hardened with what she could tell was self-reproach. His pupils constricted again, drowning his eyes in coldness contained by the darker outer ring of his irises. He leaned back and away from the young woman before him.

He was stopped short when he felt the tug of her small hand on his sleeve. Her strength was insignificant, but at that moment her pull held all the power in the world over him. He watched the ivory grip of her fingers in the fabric of his jacket, then slowly returned his gaze to her face and filled his expression with earnest warning.

“Don’t,” he breathed, staring at her lips.

“Why?” she asked just as softly, distracted as she drew closer to him.

“Because.” But that was all the argument he could drum up as suddenly, her lips met his like the touch of warm, silky-soft petals.

They were gentle and sweet and everything he’d ever imagined them to be, and he’d certainly been imagining them a lot lately. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, the lids sinking shut as she absorbed the sensation of her lips against his.

He was still cool to the touch just as he’d always been, but his mouth was soft and pliant against her own as she kissed him. She tilted her head slightly to the right, pulling herself closer with her grip on his jacket. She wanted to touch his hair. She wanted him to touch _her_ hair. Or something. She wanted so much that she didn’t know what exactly she wanted.

Then she felt him growl from deep within his chest, the noise like the purring of a huge predator, as one large hand came up to grasp her waist, wrapping itself around and locking her in the grip of his arm. She was radiating enough heat for the both of them, she was sure.

Her hands came up to rest open-palmed on the lapels of his jacket, her fingertips grazing the smooth skin beneath. She could feel the ridges of his collarbone and muscles and perhaps even that gruesome scar that blossomed from his center that she always meant to ask him about. She was afraid to explore more, but little did she know that her hesitant touch was a tickling stimulant to the exposed skin there, and he turned to lean over her, his arm around her waist tightening in an attempt to bring her closer and nearer and to _devour her._

With a gasp, she felt him manhandle her completely, towering over her much smaller body as his lips parted against her mouth. Her hands traced up the column of his neck, her thumbs tracing the underside of his jaw as they wrapped around to behind his head. She braced her forearms on his shoulders as she buried her fingers in the feathery strands of his hair, holding on for dear life as he supported them both with his other arm on the ground.

His teeth swept her bottom lip, and soon the tip of his tongue tasted where those teeth left off, molding and folding and learning her just as he’d denied himself for weeks now. He was certain the little mewls coming from her throat were completely involuntary, and that she’d be mortified if she realized she was making them. In the meantime, though, he was obsessed. He was having trouble remembering himself. _Why the hell_ didn’t he allow this to happen sooner? He kneeled before her, bent over as he consumed her. He wasn’t sure if he’d _ever_ desired someone as much as he did this girl in his arms right now. His world narrowed, and in his tunnel vision he forgot everything about himself but this woman. This _human_. This gorgeous, powerful, innocent, living thing who just kissed him _is kissing him-_

A deep, monstrous rumble rolled through the network of ruins. Bits of stone and plaster crackled from the ceiling to the floor.

Orihime blinked a few times as she regained sense of her surroundings. The two pulled from one another, still close enough for their short breaths to intermingle, her one hand still buried in his hair. She'd wanted to touch it for so long, wondering if it was as soft as it looked. She had always likened it to blue cotton candy. His arms were still wrapped around her back, pressing their bodies close together while the other supported them both. He was looking down into her eyes, expression clouded with lust and frustration as they heard another bellow echo all around them. It was coming from outside the complex.

"What is that?" she whispered, mouth barely moving as she voiced her question. There was no need to speak too loudly with him so close.

There was a pause as she watched him slowly collect his faculties, that glimmer of ever-present calculation returning to his eyes. He finally let loose a feral growl in response. "It's fucking dead meat, is what it is," he hissed, and she felt his deep voice rumble through her chest as it continued to press against his own. She couldn't help the upward quirk of her lips at the frustration in his tone. His own thinned at the amusement trickling into her expression. "What?" he barked softly at her.

She kept up her silence and merely shook her head slightly, indicating it was nothing. His upper lip quirked in annoyance and she started to pull away, detangling her fingers from his locks and knowing that the threat outside was the new priority. He reluctantly started to sit up, lifting her with him. She felt the pressure of his large hand span nearly her entire back, and as the moment died, she quickly began to fear the repercussions of what they had just done.

Then, with a nudge and a hand on her face, Grimmjow was kissing her again, stealing her breath away.

He moved away from her with a smirk, the tiny sound of their lips parting satisfyingly audible in the otherwise silent chamber. He stood, picking up Pantera from its resting place in the corner of the room and making his way to the entrance. Before exiting, he turned and looked her square in the eye.

"Stay. Here." He looked at her pointedly, though she wondered if he was capable of sentences longer than a word at this point. She thought he might be adjusting his  _hakama_  more than necessary just for his Zanpakuto. "This won't take long," he growled under his breath.

She nodded, and he made his departure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote an entire chapter about them kissing. :3


	20. "They've got to Hate what they Fear"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who needs to war with their feelings when there is an actual war?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second of two prompt-based chapters. One-word topics were solicited from readers back on FF.net a while back, although there isn't a single drabble in here. In fact, prompts one and two were victim of complete rewrite prior to posting here on AO3, and as a result could probably stand alone as their own chapter.
> 
> Uh... sorry? Hope you enjoy the extra-long install.
> 
> NOTE: SO EMBARRASSED because I posted the wrong version at first. I am not worthy. *grovels*

_searing:_

Grimmjow’s investigation was swift – and violent.

The interruption had been caused by a showcasing Adjuchas, proclaiming to challenge the strength of this rogue Espada in order to determine his worthiness.

Grimmjow, however, didn't give a flying fuck why he'd  _interrupted_. All he knew was that there was  _hell to pay_.

He took in the situation with quick judgement, determining that no, this moron was indeed not worth his time.

He simply obliterated the challenger. What was one less Adjuchas in his army when he could reinforce the subservience of the surviving onlookers by scaring them shitless?

That, and bloodlust was still  _lust_ , so it sure made him feel better.

The look on his face was cold and full of disregard as he stood over the disintegrating Hollow, the former Espada hardly breaking a sweat while dispatching him. Having been properly put into their places, the audience of formerly frenzied Hollows silently tucked tail and returned to the shadows in a decidedly anticlimactic fashion as they were effectively reminded of this powerful usurper’s potential.

Grimmjow’s expressionless face as he returned into the labyrinthine ruins hid the absolute tumult within his mind. His transit back toward the chamber where he left the girl passed in a blur, since all he could think of was his most recent kill… and the distracting feel of her lips on his own. They vied for dominance of his fractured soul, and he could not decide whether the destruction from moments prior was actually being ousted by these new and unfamiliar emotions evoked by Orihime.

His thoughts swirled impossibly in his head. It was why the scene waiting for him upon his return did not quite register at first.

He blinked twice before he dared ask a question.

“… the Hell?”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he was swarmed.

“It’s him!” exclaimed Lily as she flew in thrilled circles around the Arrancar. He recoiled, but could not avoid the other four who were joining her in her frenzy. He looked over at Orihime to tell her to call off her little bugs, but his words sputtered at the sight of her own condition.

“Owww! Stop! Tsu-ba- _kiii…_ that hurts!”

The corners of Grimmjow’s lips tightened, mostly so that his amusement could not escape into his expression. He ignored Ayame’s fiery blush and Shun’ō’s knowing grin in favor of rolling his eyes at Tsubaki, who was simultaneously pulling Orihime’s hair at the roots while bracing himself with a foot on her face. He was snarling something at her, and she looked like she needed to be rescued.

Moving through the cloud of his own fairies, he brushed past them to approach the human. When he reached her, he used his thumb and middle finger to catch Tsubaki by his wings, and the tiny man exploded with curses. Grimmjow lifted the thrashing fairy to his face and glowered at him.

“Scram, pipsqueak. Take your tribe with you, while you’re at it.”

“I told you I’d kill you if you so much as touched her, you bastard!” He swung wildly. “Come here and fight me like a man!” he spat.

Grimmjow sneered at his little challenger, but was suddenly struck by a brilliant idea. Turning to look back at the tiny crowd he had earlier tried to ignore, he raised his eyebrows pointedly, and his message came across loud and clear.

The other five fairies sprang into action, zooming forward and taking custody of the most furious member of their family. A short-lived but nevertheless epic struggle managed to subdue their sibling. With a last exuberant wink on Lily’s part, the six Shun Shun Rikka vanished in a flash of light and returned to the hairpins near Orihime’s temples.

“Mind sharing what the hell that was all about?” he finally asked the frazzled woman before him. Her embarrassment was palpable as she looked everywhere but at the former Espada and tried to answer.

“I, uh… got really worried, but you told me to wait here, so I didn’t want to make things worse,” she began in a rush as she fixed her hair, “so I thought maybe I could take my mind off things if I had someone to talk to, and since Gama-kun isn’t around for whatever reason – not that he answers anyway – but I figured I could summon my Shun Shun Rikka, but when I did they just went _nuts_ and I didn’t know what to do, especially when Tsubaki started pulling my hair, and then _Lily_ was saying these really _embarrassing_ things, but Shun’ō wasn’t stopping them like he usually does, and they were all going crazy, and I just… I couldn’t… I…”

She trailed off, her run-on sentence limping to a stop. Grimmjow was staring at her, and the look in his eyes was staggering.

The cool amusement of his gaze was tempered by the fire of his focus, and she unconsciously bit the inside of her bottom lip as he took the few steps needed to close the distance between them. She _knew_ what that look in his eyes was. It was _desire_ , but maybe if she avoided acknowledging it then she could do something about her torching face.

“Orihime,” he said in a low voice, and she was so shocked to hear her name on his tongue that she met his eyes again without a thought.

Victorious, he smirked as he bent to catch her lips with his.

It was different this time, Orihime thought. Grimmjow was in complete control now, and she felt the electricity from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. His hand caught her face this time, and the hard pads of his fingertips were an indescribable stimulant as she closed her eyes and let it all happen.

His lips were feverish upon her own, and as he coaxed her into participating, she wondered how he could still be making her feel so warm when he was so cold. She gasped as his mouth blazed a trail of searing kisses along her jawbone and to her ear, his tongue flickering out to taste her like feathery silk. He gently caught the lobe between his teeth and nibbled as his breath hissed a soft caress into the shell.

Her hands had wandered up of their own accord, and her nails scratched lightly at the nape of his neck, combing through the fine hairs there. He growled encouragingly, and she smiled through her unmistakably budding lust. As he tickled her ear, she turned her face into the column of his thick neck, delicately tracing her lips along where his pulse points would be. She felt more than heard his breath hitch, and it took only a moment for him to suddenly back her into the table behind her, towering over her and kissing her desperately again.

His hands were everywhere, starting at her hips and clutching like a lifeline. She felt his fingers dig into her fleshy parts through the fabric of her dress, and she was alight wherever they went. He slowly trailed them upward, and her heart fluttered as she felt his palms gently pass over her ribs.

When she felt his thumbs trace the underside of her breasts with a feather light touch, she gasped and pulled away from his lips by a hairsbreadth.

While she certainly _liked_ it, the contact drew a sliver of her brain back down to earth while the rest of it continued to fly in the silver clouds of metaphor. This was new. This was _very_ new, and she was afraid. His touch sent a jolt of electricity all the way down to her core, and she’d never felt that kind of desire before.

She suddenly heard herself and how loudly she was panting. Her gaze slowly came back into focus, and she caught sight of his lips, slightly parted and looking particularly ravished. She blushed and wondered how bad hers must look.

Grimmjow, for his part, slowed down as soon as he felt her flinch. He certainly had no qualms about going further, but what fun was there in forcing the girl into something she wasn’t ready for? No, he could wait.

 _Goddamn if this girl doesn’t have me whipped,_ he thought bemusedly to himself as he rested his forehead on hers, trying to calm his libido with controlled breaths. His own arousal was screaming at him through his pants leg, but there was no way she was ready for that. He just hoped she didn’t decide to lean forward into him.

Lifting one hand to again rest on her face, he asked quietly, “Am I better company than your stupid frog?”

A short pause allowed Orihime’s brain to catch up. When it did, her wide smile reached her eyes. “Well, don’t tell him I said so, but…”

Grimmjow snorted massively before bending down to wrap an arm around her middle. With an excited squeal from the unprepared girl, he lifted her over his shoulder, purposefully placing his hand precariously close to her backside as he turned and strode toward the door.

“It’s time to get to work, slacker.”

Her giggles were heard echoing throughout the maze of ruins as she was carried out like a sack of potatoes.

_floating:_

_Grimmjow wasn't lying to the girl when he told her the dead needn't sleep. He preferred to not even try. He hated the visions the attempts would give him._

_His dreams were without content – only sensation. While there were no characters or places or identifiable emotions, he would always awaken with the unusual memory of floating, like he was suspended in a fluid. The weightlessness combined with a perfect silence, enveloping him in a shroud of nothingness. His senses were numbed, but the strange, directionless vertigo would remain._

_He hated it._

_Whenever he could, he would shock himself into wakefulness, always enraged and ready to pick a fight with whatever poor bastard he ran into first._

_This time, though, for the first time, something was different._

_He was floating in that same muted aquamarine just like he always was. His limbs floated weightlessly at his sides, and his hair was like a colorless halo around his head._

_This time, though, there was a noise. It was the faintest sound of rushing, like a springtime river in the distance._

_He felt heavy, and in the first variation of his dream since memory served him, he realized that his surroundings were draining away. Burning air filled his lungs, and he gasped for an icy breath he never realized he needed._

_As the last of the liquid drained away, he was gently left on his hands and knees, bowled over and panting raggedly. His hair dripped into his eyes, and he felt the gnarly fingers of panic start to grasp at his heart as he stared at the ground. He crushed his eyes shut._

_When they opened again, it was to the vision of a hand. It was small and feminine, alabaster and delicate. Palm-up, it offered its fingers in gentle invitation._

_There was something to be said for salvation. There was something else entirely to be said for salvation offered freely. He knew there was nothing he had done during his undead days to deserve this, and likely little more he’d done in life._

_But, he thought as he lifted a hand from the wet floor to place it in hers, angels didn’t always come only to those who called._

"Grimmjow-sama," said a familiar, accented voice. His blue eyes snapped open, disoriented at first as he took in the sandstone walls and ancient columns, alighting on an embattled face he had not seen since their escape from Las Noches. "The battle has begun."

And as he eyed the obviously-fatigued Arrancar from so long ago, loyal despite the Espada's initial rejection of his subordinacy, understanding came quickly to him.

He grinned widely.

He sent his new  _Fracción_  off to Orihime to be healed, and he prepared himself for the start of their war.

_lead:_

The room around them positively vibrated with the mounting anticipation of all those gathered. Hundreds of Hollows of all shapes and sizes – Grimmjow noted with particular interest the five towering Menos Grande flanking the Great Hall – assembled for this defining moment.

The former Espada stood poised atop the pile of stone rubble at the center of it all, leaning forward with one arm propped on his knee and the other holding Pantera slung over his shoulder. Orihime looked up at him with something akin to wonder as he spoke to them all, his voice a fierce growl that thundered over the restless masses. With every sentence, the roar of their excitement built, and the girl was certain she could taste the bloodlust in the air.

She may not have been one for violence, but even she had to admit that Grimmjow's words and mannerisms here, now, were inspiring this unfamiliar excitement in her. She was getting swept up in it, in the wonderful madness that was battle, like the zealous crowds at a sporting event.

She stared up at her ally, partner, and  _friend_ with pride, and Grimmjow again noted that hint of something ancient and wise in her eyes. He felt her stare, but avoided eye contact, knowing that there was a time and place for special treatment, and  _this was not it._ She'd understand, anyway. She was smart like that.

There was no poise or refinement in his pose atop his little hill, but the effortlessness with which he stood there over his new legions instilled pride and surety in the empty centers of this mass of monsters. He was their leader, their Alpha, and soon…

…he would be their  _king_.

_Upstaged:_

When he suddenly pointed at her halfway through his speech, Orihime blanched.

"Eh?"

"You all see this human girl? Do you?" he called over the crowd. The assembly of monsters chittered and cawed. Some knew  _exactly_ who and what she was, but even more were left in the dark, wondering who this delectable little morsel before them could possibly be. Did their new master perhaps bring them a snack?

Grimmjow's  _reiatsu_  roared throughout the chamber, grounding them all with a demonstrative show of dominance. The Hollows were silenced.

"She is your  _queen_ , and the only reason any of you are alive right now." With that, he abruptly aimed a sure Cero at one of the five towering Menos Grande-class Gillians, incinerating its middle and effectively severing its top from bottom. It cried out in monstrous agony, and the creatures all throughout the room wailed in commiseration or bloodlust. The girl couldn't tell which.

" _What are you doing?!"_ she hissed at her partner in horror. He remained stoic as he turned his gaze to her and commanded:

"Fix it."

And, while Orihime abhorred his methods, she understood.

" _Souten Kisshun_. I reject!"

Two bursts of stardust exploded from her hairclips, rushing to the Gillian as it fell slowly through the sky to the stones below. The Hollows all around were already whipped into a frenzy, ready to consume their supposedly lost sibling.

Then, warm, golden light enveloped the Gillian's mortal wound. It instantly began mending itself.

She had their attention.

Hundreds of wide, wonderfilled eyes turned in her direction as she concentrated on her work. As the sweat beaded on her forehead – couldn't Grimmjow have made the injury a  _little_  smaller?! – she did her best to ignore their gazes.

"There  _had_ to have been easier ways to do this," she complained to him. The Arrancar merely smirked and dropped the few feet from his perch to her side.

"They're dumb. They need to  _see_  to believe," he said softly, his breath ghosting into her ear to send electric shivers up Orihime’s spine and across her shoulders.

 _Gah! Distracting!_ she thought with mild panic and a fiery blush. She whined in her throat. Grimmjow chuckled lowly. _Ooh… he knows exactly what he's doing!_ she complained in her mind, trying to keep any other unbidden noises to herself.

When the Gillian was healed and in one piece, she shifted awkwardly, particularly aware of its giant, empty eye sockets staring into what seemed to be her very soul. She had forgotten how frightening they were.

"Um…" she began.

She snapped her head up to look at Grimmjow when she heard him laugh, rough but controlled.

"Looks like you, little Princess, just upstaged me." He pinned her with a fierce gaze. "I think it's about time we crashed a party, don't you think?"

Orihime felt her pulse race and her breathing increase in excitement. She nodded once, firmly. "It's time, isn't it?"

Grimmjow grinned.

_Butterflies, kiss:_

"Nervous?"

At a small table, Orihime looked up from her task of refolding her cloak. It was her seventh try. Grimmjow's almost-smile was wry.

"I guess I just can't believe it's actually happening. I've never fought in a war before." She smoothed the fabric with both hands, willing their trembling not to reveal the true extent of her worries to the Arrancar at her back.

Daily life had been so strange since they had run from Las Noches. So concerned had she been lately with her confusing feelings for the man behind her that she had almost entirely forgotten about the horrors they’d escaped – and would soon be returning to. Her brave friends and the troops from Soul Society had even come for her, as Grimmjow had told her, and she felt a little guilty for sparing time for romance when so much was still at stake. Aizen - she shuddered when she thought of the horribly manipulative man and his silk words - was still a very real threat, despite the recent distance that made him seem little more than  _someone else's problem._

Ulquiorra's cold, marble face and piercing green, reptilian eyes flashed in her mind. Echoes of that horrible noise she heard in the hallways fluttered around her like phantoms. Cold tendrils of doubt swirled around in her stomach.

And then there was Kurosaki-kun…

Orihime bit her lip as she thought about her feelings for the boy, and how suddenly, strangely, they were not the source of the butterflies in her stomach. Her mind flashed to a memory of urgent lips upon her own and strong fingers threading through her hair, and an increasingly familiar tightness gripped her heart with what might very well be...

She heard his soft footfalls before she felt his body approach from behind. His long arms came around either side of her body to cage her, and she noticed the butterflies in her belly come to a stop when his large hands covered her own, stilling their fidgeting. He leaned forward over her shoulder, and she saw his face in the peripherals of her right side. She could not see his bone fragment.

Grimmjow watched their hands entwine, expressionless as he examined her soft palms with his hard, callused fingers.

While their relationship had certainly changed a great deal over the past few weeks, this could easily be the most intimate gesture he'd shown her yet. She worried her bottom lip harder as she watched his ministrations, holding her breath. Her brain swirled with a million thoughts, jumping from her past to her present to her future to her _present,_ and her heart wanted to explode with something she did not want to name.

He was no monster. No monster could make her feel like this.

"We're going to win," he rumbled softly next to her ear. She felt the vibrations from his deep voice in his chest, and - just like that - she was comforted. She ordered her imagination to return to Earth. She could not stop her remaining doubts from bleeding through her words, though.

"How can you know that?" she whispered, frowning when she heard the tremble in her voice. _I am not weak._ She smiled gently when she heard his characteristic scoff.

"Because you're going to destroy the Hougyoku with the very power that Aizen was too idiotic to take advantage of."

Orihime leaned away so she could look up into his face. "And if I mess up?"

The former Espada turned his head slightly so he could look at her out of the corner of his eye. "Then I'll be there to get you out of every fuckup you get yourself into, of course."

Warmth swelled in her chest, despite his vulgarity. "You promise?" she asked hopefully.

His facial expression remained stoic, but she could see his eyes smile. "Tch. I promise."

He couldn't entirely mask his surprise when she stood on her toes to leave a chaste kiss on his cheek. The affectionate gesture was foreign to him, having not received it in hundreds of years, so when his face scrunched up in mock confusion the girl couldn't help but laugh. He felt some of the tension leave her as she exhaled and sank back into his pseudo-embrace.

He let her stay there for a moment, allowing himself this one indulgence before the next phase was set in motion. Soon, he would be back in battle, shredding his enemies with sword and claw alike. He _couldn't wait._

But there was something equally appealing about his here-and-now. He buried his nose in her shoulder and took a slow, steadying breath, allowing her scent to lull him into placidity if but for a minute. At this very moment, everything else seemed like such a distant undertaking. Ulquiorra was still a dick, but a _distant_ dick, and Kurosaki was still a self-righteous little orange maggot who had no clue how outclassed he was, but it did not bother him as much. The deep, simmering hatred he had for Aizen, his captor and master of nearly a century, was suddenly secondary to the possessiveness he felt for the girl in his arms. There was no way she could ever understand what a tranquilizer her mere presence was.

He stayed like that for a short while before his restless nature finally took over. Rubbing his thumbs across the backs of her hands, Grimmjow reached forward and swiped her folded cloak. In one motion, he stepped back and swirled it around her, letting it come to rest on her shoulders and swallow her comparatively small body.

"Time to get your ass in gear, Princess," he ordered as he looked down into her eyes, his voice husky with something unnamed before he cleared his throat.

Then, on impulse, he reached out, grasping her waist and crushing her body to his. He eyed her with a frown before he dipped, meeting her lips one last time. He felt Orihime stiffen in shock, but he persevered.

The human girl’s eyes welled with emotion at the unexpected action, wondering what had him acting like this. As she felt his kiss intensify, though, it was not long before she was reciprocating passionately, pouring her heart and soul and misgivings into the action. Her fingers reached up and threaded into the hair at the nape of his neck, and his one hand covered her shoulder blade, pressing her closer.

She wondered as they embraced what would become of  _them_  after this was all over. She'd avoided the thought until now, but the fleeting worry nagged at her, creeping up when her other stresses vied for dominance in her heart. Would he let her go home?

Would she  _want_ to go home?

She pulled away a few inches, taking a moment to scan his features. He allowed her examination, looking back at her from under heavy lids and catching his breath. Her lips felt swollen.

"You're touching my face again," he pointed out, a smidgen of accusation in his tone.

Orihime merely smiled sadly, realizing that yes, she was. "You'll live."

An ironic choice of words, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He watched her closely, gaze flickering between her ash-colored eyes and her pink lips before tracing her arms down to her hands with his fingers, grabbing them and setting her into motion and out the door together with him.

Orihime braced herself for the future and whatever it held in store.

_burning:_

The passage between the Negal Ruins and Las Noches was tempestuous, at best. Grimmjow had gone first, followed by the first third of his forces. Orihime passed through next minutes later on Bawabawa's back, the toad on her shoulder and Grimmjow's new  _Fracción_  to their right. She was the key to their victory, and her protection would not be taken lightly. Two of the Adjuchas flanked them on either side, but they were far from any Menos Grande in order to prevent drawing attention.

Winds whipped all about them like blades of air, the colors in the dark vacuum shifting between hues, vaguely iridescent. She had to squint her eyes against the swirling storm. Her skin burned, and she was glad Grimmjow had made her wear the cloak.

But Bawabawa was swift, and they soon emerged from the temporal bridge and into the bright, artificial daylight of Las Noches. Orihime raised her hand to her face to shield her eyes, hoping they adjusted quickly.

When they did, she wished she was blind.

_penetrating_

All around them was a field of carnage. Monstrous Hollows howled as they slaughtered one another, talons shredding flesh and gruesome jaws crushing bones.

Orihime expected to see such horrors and steeled herself against them as best she could. She leaned forward to give Bawabawa an order, and the group was off, penetrating Aizen's lines to where she knew the Hougyoku was.

As they proceeded, she sent her Shun Shun Rikka all around them, aiding fallen comrades and defending those still standing. She kept Tsubaki with her, deciding only to use him when absolutely necessary.

She was stunned when, just for a moment, she caught the unmistakable glimpse of auburn hair.

"Rangiku-san!" she gasped.

Sure enough, the Shinigami lieutenant was carving her way through the dunes and the monsters atop them. Chaos reigned, and Matsumoto did not have any idea where this new group of Hollows had suddenly appeared from, but she was going to count her blessings and not question the reason the beasts were suddenly fighting amongst themselves. They were mindless monsters, after all.

Orihime was too far to draw the lieutenant's attention, so she sadly withdrew her gaze again. She could not afford the distraction; too much relied on her.

It took the better part of an hour, but the small group eventually made its way through the fray. Here, ranking Espada clashed with Shinigami lieutenants and captains, alike, and the girl's eyes darted between the combatants for a familiar face.

 _There_.

Aizen and his two Shinigami followers stood apart from the current bloodshed, playing spectator. They were accompanied by...

 _Oh, no_.

There, standing calmly before his masters while he observed the myriad of battles with a cold, unsettling, verdant stare was Ulquiorra. The Cuatro Espada's eyes darted to and fro, his pupils slit menacingly as he determined the threat posed by each enemy they alighted on.

Then, as if he sensed something exceptional, his attention suddenly focused squarely on Orihime in the crowd. Her heart stopped as his eyes narrowed.

When he flickered from sight, the woman knew he had used his  _Sonido._ When he appeared again directly before their ragtag group, she knew their fate was sealed.

_supernova_

"It was foolish of you to return here, Orihime Inoue." Ulquiorra's deep, stony voice resonated in her soul, and she felt shivers of fear crawl down her spine along with the nervous churn of bile in her stomach.

Grimmjow's  _Fracción_ cursed at the Cuatro's sudden appearance as he reached for his sheathed weapon, recognizing the futility in the gesture but unwilling to fail his new master. Bawabawa reared up and roared at the new threat, sending Orihime aloft from her position on his back.

"I do not know what you hoped to accomplish by coming back," he told her, eyeing the  _Fracción_  he certainly remembered, "but know that your efforts are worse than futile."

Orihime's hopes plummeted when, not even bothering to draw his sword, the Espada extended his index finger in a motion the girl now recognized well. As the pinpoint Cero charged at his fingertip, she prepared to deploy her shield, not knowing if it could defend them against such sheer power.

"Inoue!"

The desperate cry stole the attention of the entire group, even Ulquiorra.

"Kuro...saki-kun?"

Sure enough, the substitute Shinigami was rushing the group in a desperate blur of black and orange, the obsidian Zangetsu brandished and ready to challenge the Espada.

Ulquiorra diverted his attention to the incoming threat, the corners of his lips turned downward in displeasure.

As Ichigo pulled his sword back for a devastating downswing, the Cuatro raised his hand in preparation to catch the blade.

A massive crimson Cero blasted Ulquiorra from behind, catching all unawares and forcefully sending him away from the group.

"Hurry and get the fuck out of here, Princess." Her relief was immense, and she felt her heart start again at the familiar tenor of Grimmjow's voice. "Dipshit here and I will keep him distracted," he reassured, referring to the dumbstruck human boy before them both.

"Okay," she breathed, relieved. The Sexta gave her a look before bounding in the direction he'd sent his once-superior flying. Ichigo followed after, hardly sparing Orihime a backward glance in his confusion. Her heart twisted oddly.

The Fracción nodded at her. "Let's go,  _Princesa_ ," he said, adopting the former Espada's nickname for her. She nodded back and they continued onward, doubling their previous pace as the trio of warriors they left behind exploded in battle behind them like a supernova.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on "floating":
> 
> There was once an excellent fanfiction titled "Nine Tales" posted on ff.net that has since been removed from the internet. This saddens me even to this day, because that sh*t was my GrimmHime headcanon, and was about Grimmjow using Orihime's powers to get his memories of life back. I do not go too deeply into that in my story, although I have already expressed how interesting I think it is (and what a wasted narrative opportunity for KT's often tired storylines), but in a nod to that fantastic fic, I sometimes reach back into that bag in order to build Grimmjow's colorful background.


	21. "None of Them Can Stop Us Now"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two staunch enemies find tenuous common ground.

The roar of the battle below them was drowned out by the scream of the wind in their ears. They could see Ulquiorra focused entirely on their movements as they weaved in and out from between lesser Hollows, the monsters mauling one another in a frenzy of bloodlust. His glare was a cold jade, reptilian pupils following the desperate evasion of the substitute Shinigami and the former Espada.

"I don't get it," Ichigo called out from behind Grimmjow, the two warriors back to back as they fended off the onslaught of Aizen's attacking hordes whilst keeping a safe distance from the deadly Cuatro. He did nothing to mask the distaste beneath the confusion in his voice. "Why have you changed sides?" He still hadn't forgotten the hand through Rukia's middle.

As they pushed back the masses that stood between them and Ulquiorra, Grimmjow snarled in response.

"Don't you fucking think for a minute that I'm on your side," he spat as he thrust _Pantera_ into the face of a lesser Arrancar. He ripped the glimmering blade from the partial mask of bone, crimson blood spraying from the wound he had inflicted. In the next beat, he spun precisely, slicing another through the spine. Ichigo whirled around at his response, shocked and on the defensive.

"Then what..." Ichigo’s question died in his throat the moment Grimmjow turned to look at the orange-haired youth. His eyes shimmered blue with an icy, potent hatred that made the boy’s heart stutter. The expression he wore was full of such loathing, Ichigo wondered if it could possibly all stem from their rivalry on the battlefield, alone.

Then, the Espada stunned the boy again. "I'm on  _her_  side," he growled as his hard eyes landed on the girl a stage below them. Ichigo's gaze slipped from his reluctant fighting partner to the object of his scrutiny.

Orihime was in the center of a throng of Hollows, from the most basic of forms to massive Gillians and even some full-fledged Adjuchas. She was alone with them.

Ichigo felt panic rising in his throat like bile.

"Inoue…!"

"Pay attention, you dumb fuck," Grimmjow interrupted, hissing balefully at the substitute Shinigami.

Uneasy alliance be damned, he was ready to slash through the former Sexta with _Zangetsu_ if it meant he could get to Orihime’s side faster. His friend was in danger, and there was no way she could protect herself from all those Hollows he had just seen surrounding her. He turned again, ready to dive to her rescue.

But when he did, and he looked back down, he realized that none of the Hollows were even facing Orihime. His jaw came somewhat loose as his mind tried to process Grimmjow’s command and grasp the situation.

"They're… protecting her?" he asked incredulously, voice nearly cracking. He parried a Hollow’s stray attack that almost caught him off guard before looking back at Grimmjow. The man’s unfamiliar expression nearly floored him.

For the first time, Ichigo did not see bloodlust, or disinterest, or mania, or even hunger on this Arrancar's face. For the fraction of a moment that Ichigo witnessed it pass over his countenance, he saw Grimmjow's eyes brim with a powerful intensity that the human boy never would have expected to see there.

In them he saw… Pride. Satisfaction. And…

"They've pledged themselves to her," Grimmjow said matter-of-factly to the young man, whose head was still spinning with this unexpected turn of events. He watched Grimmjow’s eyes harden again, aware of his scrutiny. "She is their queen, for all intents and purposes."

"Their… queen?" Grimmjow's stare remained on the young woman below them for a moment longer, watching as she moved with her battalions through Aizen's ranks, carving a path for her allies with Tsubaki just as quickly as she healed her fallen comrades. It could be said that morale amongst her Hollows had never been higher. These typically solitary creatures could now fight to the limits of their abilities without risk of dying, thanks to their very own goddess. Their cries were so ferocious that many of their opponents did not even stick around long enough to be cut in half by her offensive power. They were getting closer and closer to the epicenter of the battle.

Grimmjow's gaze rose to the substitute before him.

"I _will_ help her destroy the Hougyoku. You're either with us, or you're against us, Kurosaki."

With those steely words, Ichigo looked back down at his schoolmate, watching with wide eyes as she plowed through their enemies with what seemed like great ease. So _that_ was their plan.

What the hell _happened_ when she was captured? Was this the same Inoue that he had come to rescue? The same selfless, pacifistic, sacrificing girl that he’d gone to school, to battle, and to war with?

His fingers twitched on the pommel of his blade when he heard her cry out in anguish. One of the Hollows at her side had been on the receiving end of a particularly wild _Bala_ , and her healing fairies were out not a moment later, repairing the damage. Even from this distance, he could make out the wretched look of vicarious suffering on her face.

This battle was killing her, and she felt every blow – to ally and enemy alike – acutely.

Hueco Mundo hadn't changed Orihime much at all, it seemed. His grip on _Zangetsu_ tightened once again.

Ichigo usually didn't ever waste a great deal of time deciding anything. His black and white outlook helped him make decisions with a confident spontaneity, and that instinct had served him pretty well through life. Right and wrong were typically straightforward, and internal conflict could be left up to worrywarts like Keigo.

"What are we waiting for, then?" he said to the blue-haired Hollow, his voice deepened with his resolve. "Let's make sure Aizen doesn't realize she's coming."

Grimmjow's gaze remained stern as it pinned down the human boy. Unreadable, his azure glare was fierce in its ambiguity, but the human boy did not back down. His own scowl was markedly ferocious as he waited for the former Espada to react.

Then, Grimmjow nodded once. "Good," he said firmly, quietly. Theirs would be a tentative alliance, forged by their strange and mutual connection to the same girl. Then, with a complete change of attitude and as if reminding himself, “Don't think this means I won't annihilate you when this is all over, by the way." Ichigo sent him an ugly glare, but Grimmjow pretended to ignore it. "It's time to kick some ass together, turdface."

The two executed a _Shunpo_ and _Sonido_ nearly simultaneously, now hurrying in the direction of Ulquiorra. They were finished evading. First, the Cuatro had to be stopped, and neither was fool enough to think they could do it alone.

Grimmjow suspected he could defeat his superior if he permitted himself to surpass his own limits, but he would not put his future at stake like that. It was time again to make an uneasy battlefield alliance, this time with the loathsome human boy currently at his side. If nothing else, he would do it for the woman. She'd probably be fool enough to be proud of him for the act.

He snorted at the thought, earning him a confused glance from Kurosaki.

Always one to keep his eye on the prize, though, Grimmjow never took his sights off of the conniving former Shinigami captain and his long-lived plans as his golden streak of hope burned brightly below them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long time ago, (like ten years, God help me) I came across this GrimmHime fanart by Kara-lija. It both became the loose inspiration for this story as well as my exposure the song behind most chapter titles, "We're in this Together Now" by Nine Inch Nails. Do me a favor and go give it some love.
> 
> http://fav.me/d14tnwv


	22. ...To Die For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "His sword isn't called Pantera for nothing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own the song "...To Die For," composed and produced by Hans Zimmer from The Lion King score soundtrack by Disney.

Grimmjow could see the Shinigami boy struggling.

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place wonderfully: he could sense the reiatsu of the top three Espada locked in battle with other denizens of the Seireitei. There was no sign of Nnoitra, and he hoped the bastard bit the bullet early on.

But now, as he fought together with Kurosaki against the Cuatro Espada, he knew they needed  _something_  else. Ulquiorra was far too strong for them as they were now.

"Hey. Shit-for-brains," he called over to the orange-haired youth. Ichigo looked over at him with a mean frown, his breathing ragged and already frustrated at his inability to penetrate Ulquiorra's defenses.

"What do you want?" he acknowledged with tremendous annoyance. The more time Ichigo was given to dwell on the situation, the more his discomfort rose. Grimmjow was not one he'd ever willingly ally himself with, and the circumstances were gnawing at him. What happened between the Espada and Orihime to cause things to be the way they were now?

"Why are you holding back?" the Sexta accused bluntly.

Ichigo started. "How do you..."

He jumped when Grimmjow's cold gaze snapped to him.

"You used more power just to give me this scar than you've used in this entire fight," he accused, taking one hand off Pantera in order to trace the jagged edges of his marking. Ichigo eyed it warily before shifting his gaze away guiltily.

"I can't..."

Grimmjow interrupted with a snarl.

"You can, and you will. Ulquiorra is not one to take lightly, and there is no way we can possibly beat him like this." The blue-haired man continued to watch the troubled youth out of the corner of his eye as he kept a wary gaze on Ulquiorra. The edges of the Cuatro's uniform were singed from a particularly lucky strike the duo had landed on him, and he had since begun paying the two his undivided attention.

They may have been weaker than him, but they were both formidable opponents, and Ulquiorra would not be foolish enough to allow them to get the upper hand. This battle needed to end swiftly if he was to return to Aizen-sama's side in short order. He knew that the former Sexta's sudden reentry into the picture was something his master had not anticipated, and he needed to help ensure the rebellious Arrancar's wave of supporters did not upset the balance of battle too much.

Grimmjow's grip on his hilt shifted, and both Ichigo and the Cuatro felt an eerie change in his aura.

"Look. This is not the time to hold back,  _Shinigami_." He spat out the title like a curse. "If we don't stop this jackass here and now, there will be no chance for us to push forward and stop Aizen. Do you understand?" He watched as the teenager's teeth gnashed in indecision.

Grimmjow released a torrent of reiatsu, raging and fiery and feral. It was exceptional, as if he’d pulled the cork from a bottle, and it was unusual enough to draw the boy's attention.

"Let's make a deal, Kurosaki,” he offered, his voice a chilling purr. “I'll show you mine if you show me yours." The young man's eyes widened in confusion at the suggestive request before he watched Grimmjow take a bracing stance, fingers curled like claws at the base of his Zanpakutou's blade. The muscles in his forearm corded with tension, his whole body rigid with anticipation. The metal glinted strangely, and Ichigo thought his eyes might be deceiving him when he noticed it _glowing blue._

 _Grimmjow has a_ resurrección _, too?_ he thought with some panic, recalling the ability the other Arrancar he'd encountered had.

" _Grind, Pantera_!"

The shockwave that erupted from the Sexta as he raked his nails down the metal was immense. Ichigo raised his arm to shield his face, and he watched Ulquiorra do the same, the Cuatro's eyes narrowed in resignation. Sands swirled in the spinning winds caused by the massive release of reiatsu, a veritable tornado swallowing the former Espada's body whole. Tiny bolts of electricity crackled wildly, adding to the chaotic tempest.

Ichigo reflected on how grateful he was that this fierce Arrancar was fighting on his side for now. He doubted he would have come out of a battle with him unscathed.

As the noise lessened and the winds died down, the dust began to still. The human boy saw abrupt flashes of white peek out of the cloud, hinting at the form within.

Then, Grimmjow roared.

The action clearly wasn't used for intimidation, alone, although the animalistic noise sent chills racing down the substitute Shinigami's spine. The power produced by the gesture forced Ichigo to take a step backward, shielding himself again from this second onslaught. He caught a glimpse of Ulquiorra and saw that he was not pleased.

 _All this... just from his_ roar _? Is this... Is this the power of an Espada?_  he wondered nervously. They truly were in a class of their own amongst Hollows.

He frowned then.

 _Grimmjow is going all out, and I'm too much of a coward to face my own demons,_  he thought in a moment of self-criticism.  _How the hell am I supposed to keep my promise to protect Orihime if I let a freaking Hollow do my job?!_

With that thought, he raised his hand to his face resolutely, his mask materializing in a milky swirl of dark energy.

That was the last thing he remembered as he let the Hollow within take over.

* * *

 

Orihime felt sweat dripping down the back of her neck. The dust from the desert battlefield was kicked up all around them, caking onto her uncomfortably and filling her lungs. She ignored the minor discomfort as best she could.

While she always had a particularly heightened spiritual ability, she felt hypersensitized when she felt the  _reiatsu_  of both Grimmjow and Ichigo practically explode. The awareness tickled at the base of her skull, and she resisted the urge to turn back.

"It seems Grimmjow-sama has released his  _resurrección_ ," said the _Fracción_ dashing alongside Bawabawa. The word was unfamiliar to her, and she rolled it around on her tongue silently. Orihime wondered if that was anything like a Shinigami's bankai, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to see the Espada again.  _What does it look like, I wonder?_  she thought with a bite of her lower lip. He felt so powerful, and from so far away.

As if he could read her mind, the  _Fracción_  spoke up again. "His sword isn't called 'Pantera' for nothing," he said wryly. "His whole body becomes a weapon when he transforms. Watching him fight is like watching water dance. His kills are swift and precise." She heard the note of admiration in his tone and was again reminded of the fierce loyalty the abrasive former Espada always seemed to command from his followers. Her imagination loved the imagery the  _Fracción_  used, and she wondered if she would ever be able to see Grimmjow's transformation for herself.

Her fantasy came to an abrupt stop when the earth exploded before Bawabawa.

She heard the  _Fracción_  curse loudly as she was thrown off her mount, the cushiony sands that softened the impact also separating her from the toad Hollow that still rode her shoulder. Nevertheless, her landing was jarring, and her head spun wildly.

It seemed they'd been spotted.

Ironically enough, it was by a blind Shinigami.

* * *

 

Something was wrong.

Not here, because frankly he and the Shinigami boy were kicking serious ass, forcing Ulquiorra to release his own  _resurrección_  and still having him against the ropes.

No, things were dandy here.

 _Orihime_ , Grimmjow thought to himself, his sixth sense telling him something was very wrong.

It had been ages since he had felt the veritable rush that came with his transformation. Aizen had forbidden its release within the compound long ago, seeing as how unpredictably destructive it could be. The power was simply incomparable, and Grimmjow reveled in the feeling of dominance - of godliness - that rolled across his skin in warm waves. His fingers tingled, his toes tingled, hell, he was pretty sure his _hair_  tingled, and it felt like all his muscles were being fueled by a powerful motor churning in his center. This was the power he had sacrificed his autonomy to Aizen for, and he remembered again how very _worth it_  the price was at the time. He felt his lips draw back, curling over the massive fangs he'd missed for a while now.

He'd abandoned his bid to become a Vasto Lorde with the arrival of Aizen's tempting offer. Instead of following the instinctive urge to regain his humanity by  _consuming_  to fill the hollowness, he instead cast the hunger away altogether when he tore off his own mask to become an Arrancar. He chose the path of least resistance back then, but now it was time to buy back his freedom.

Orihime was his key to it all.

He had stalled out, he admitted to himself, until she showed up at that assembly hall and healed his arm in what turned out to be the most fateful encounter of his long afterlife.

His lips curled over his teeth again, exposing massive canines to the dry desert air. The gesture was not unlike that of a wildcat as it tried to sniff the air discreetly, whiskers twitching. The muscles in his face jumped.

His ability to sense reiatsu had never been very acute, but he found himself particularly attuned to the girl's frequency. She was in distress.

Recognizing the distraction he was experiencing, he grit his teeth in frustration. The boy was losing control, he noted as he watched Kurosaki lay an impressive series of  _Getsuga Tenshou_  on the Cuatro Espada, but with that abandonment of self seemed to come a power that left even Grimmjow a little wary.

The boy was losing the battle not to the Hollow before him, but instead to this mysterious Hollow self  _within_  him.

Hoping to unleash a little chaos into the mix, the former Espada sprang into action, swiftly delivering a series of blows that the orange haired teenager at his side matched with slightly less finesse. Ulquiorra blocked most of them, but the few that landed did significant damage.

Then, Grimmjow reared back and launched a series of crystal-like missiles from his elbow, his self-dubbed  _Garra de la Pantera_  detonating in a series the moment after they impacted the Murcielago-enhanced Ulquiorra. The explosions rocked the Cuatro's body, and Grimmjow felt a cold satisfaction when he watched Ichigo opportunistically land a savage attack of his own.

The kid could hold down the fort, he decided.

Upon coming to that impulsive conclusion, he blasted off in the direction of the girl, hoping he could make it to her in time.

What he saw when he arrived sparked a rage in him so severe, he saw red for a moment.

That blind Shinigami  _bastard_  that had cut off the Sexta's arm and stripped him of his rank was there, suspended in the air using his own reiatsu and holding the girl by her neck as he likely blathered on about "justice" or some bullshit.

Savage fury burned cold in Grimmjow, and he moved.

* * *

 

She struggled against the grip, her feet kicking ineffectively against Tousen. Her airway was being cut off, and as she lost oxygen her motions became more desperate and less precise. The noises that were coming from her mouth were tiny, choked, and grotesque.

Tsubaki flew at the former Shinigami captain, but the sightless man sensed the sprite's attack with surprising accuracy and fended him off with his sword. She could not concentrate enough to make the rejection as powerful as it needed to be against such a formidable foe.

Panic wrapped around her heart as her options lessened. As her vision tunneled and her awareness of her surroundings diminished, her thoughts spun wildly. This simply couldn't be the end. She once thought she was ready for martyrdom, but now with her enemy's hands wrapped around her throat, she realized she was not yet ready to die. Despair crawled upon her.

There was so much that had to be done,  _so many_  people that would be upset with her.

She hadn't tried every flavor of ice cream at the new parlor around the corner. All those years spent keeping up her grades would be for nothing. Tatsuki would be so sad.

Kurosaki-kun would blame himself.

 _Grimmjow would.._.

Her last fleeting thought consumed what was left of her consciousness as her vision began fading to black, and tears started collecting at the corners of her eyes.

She would die here.

In a last ditch effort, she summoned her  _Santen Kesshun_  with her final conscious thoughts, erecting the shield during the fraction of an instant when she felt Tousen's grip loosen strangely.

As the golden triangle split her from her captor, a rapid series of events unfolded, creating a confusing whirlwind of emotion.

First came the elation at escaping his grip and opening her airway, freeing her to greedily suck in a painful breath. That had been a much more dangerous clutch than anything Grimmjow had ever subjected her to.

Then, she was filled with shock when she followed Tousen's blank gaze down to his midsection. There, a bloodied ebony hand poked through completely, deadly claws curled frighteningly as gory bits of his own insides dripped off. Orihime assumed the mysterious owner of this dangerous appendage had impaled the Shinigami from behind. Gruesome as the scene was, she felt oddly grateful.

Finally, the young woman felt cold panic overcome her in slow motion as she realized that Tousen's lost grip on her meant she was plummeting to her doom. The emotion flooded her senses and blocked out everything else with a yellow, alarm-like sensation.

The mere seconds it took to fall seemed to take an eternity to pass.

Tears squeezed from her eyes as Orihime shut them tightly against the sandy floor rushing up to meet her.


	23. "We Have to Hold On"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her wish is his command.

She'd been falling, but someone caught her.

Long, white arms wrapped around her from behind, the impact to her center winding her with an " _Oof_!" Pressed against the solid wall of her rescuer’s front, she held on to the strange forearms for dear life, knowing she owed whoever this was everything.

Unfamiliar as she was with her savior, the worry could not overtake her yet. She was too busy recovering from the preoccupation of her previously-certain impending doom. When black hands and their wicked ebony claws gently grasped her sides, though, the fabric of her dress snagged in them delicately.  She suddenly recognized the potential lethality of those talons at her sides, and Orihime began feeling slightly ill.

When the curtain of oh-so-familiar blue hair fluttered into her line of vision, however, she gasped.

Still suspended in midair as they made their descent, she scrambled to turn in her savior's arms, craning her neck to look at his face.

Warm, indefinable emotion flooded her chest at the sight of those glacial blue eyes looking down at her from beneath a sleek bony crown. She looked in wonder at the familiar stranger holding her.

"Grimm-… jow?"

His unsettling gaze narrowed as he bent his face to hers. She was unbothered by it. "Hey, Princess," he said deeply.

"You're… Wow." She was at a loss for words. Her hands reached up of their own accord; for the first time ever she touched  _both_  sides of his jaw lightly. He scowled and recoiled slightly.

"What  _is_ it with you and touching my face?" he scolded gently, dangerous pointed teeth flashing at her from between his lips. A watery laugh escaped her as her hands lowered to wrap behind his neck. Her forehead tipped forward and rested on his exposed collarbone, enveloping him in the closest thing to a hug she could manage.

"You look awesome," she said simply, hoarsely, and he could feel her warm tears running down his chest. He lifted one clawed hand to rest gently on the back of her head as he buried his nose in her hair.

"What's with the waterworks? Why the hell are you crying?" he asked softly, the censure dying in his voice as he breathed her in. When she just shook her head, he exhaled deeply. "You're stupid," he remarked.

She laughed again as he alighted on the ground, releasing her from his arms. She took him in entirely, and she silently agreed with her earlier assessment. His body was long and sleek, wrapped in white bony armor that tightly hugged every line of his body. Grimmjow's limbs looked like they went on forever, and Orihime felt slightly giddy when she eyed the black cat paws that ended his legs and the curling, whiplike tail slashing the air violently behind him. The lines that segmented his armor all led to the hole in his center, and for once Orihime thought the feature fit him perfectly.

"Try to get by without me for fifteen minutes. I can't come save your ass all the time, you weakling," he chastised as he eyed the ugly bruising already mottling her neck. He contained his fury with commendable restraint, having already paid the offender his due retribution. Orihime merely nodded.

"Sorry, your majesty." Grimmjow grinned widely at her title for him, the fangs lining his jaws glinting at her in the artificial sunlight of Las Noches. Pausing for a moment as if remembering something, he reached back under the high black collar of his armor, pulling something out and tossing it to her.

Orihime barely caught the little toad Hollow that had been following her around at the Negal Ruins. He croaked happily at being reunited with the girl. She made a noise of delight.

"Dumb little bastard jumped me on my way over here. Nearly fried him myself on accident." Before leaping away and becoming airborne, he looked at the girl one last time. "Get back in the ranks, Orihime. You'll be nothing but a big target once all your fairies are out of the picture," he cautioned seriously.

She started to nod, but must have seen something coming over his shoulder.  He saw the girl's eyes widen before hearing her warning gasp. Grimmjow spun around away from her, ready to defend against the threat she could see coming.

His surprise was significant when he saw the giant scythe belonging to Nnoitra crash down onto her golden shield behind him, the triangle materializing between the two warriors in an instant. He was silently grateful for her protection; the bastard would have taken advantage of his distraction and stabbed him in the back if it hadn't been for her timely reaction. When a golden streak exploded from its center and straight at the Cinco, he swelled with pride. He'd never seen  _that_ particular move.  _Nicely done, pipsqueak_ , he praised Tsubaki in his mind.

He sneered at the other Espada as he watched him stagger backward, eyeing the new crack in his weapon. "Bitch!" he heard Nnoitra hiss through his teeth.

_Bet that burns him up inside,_ the Sexta thought with cold satisfaction. "Hey, Chiclets!" Grimmjow called out. Orihime had told him once how the Cinco's teeth reminded her of the treats, and he absolutely _had_ to use the comparison. He chuckled at his own joke. When the black haired Espada turned to acknowledge his insult, the former Sexta raised his upper lip and sneered haughtily, flashing his fangs.

"Duck."

Nnorta had only a moment to stare blankly before a massive javelin took him in the jaw, sailing in from seemingly nowhere. It blasted him well clear of the immediate area.

Grimmjow watched with minor interest as a green-haired female Arrancar, a look of cold determination under her pink facial marking, followed though, not pausing for a moment as she charged at Nnoitra's body on four pounding hooves.

Strange. She wasn't part of their rebellion.

Grimmjow turned one last time to Orihime and matched her dumbfounded look with a shrug before taking off and rejoining the fray.

Bawabawa appeared at Orihime's side suddenly, and the girl gratefully climbed onto his back and again started toward her target.

The battle continued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check out my tumblr for latest updates, doodles (sometimes story-related!), and the general ravings and trash-reblogs of a bored fangirl.
> 
> http://dwipdefeatyou.tumblr.com/


	24. "The Deeper the Wound..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo loses control, and everyone loses.

Grimmjow never imagined the situation would be so dire when he returned following his short sidebar.

He screeched to a halt mid- _sonido_ , eyes wide at the sight before him.

There was a hole in the sky.

More accurately, there was a hole in the ceiling that enclosed Las Noches in a dome of false sunlight. Sensing the battle raging overhead, Grimmjow warily approached the breach, wholly unprepared for the sight that would greet him.

Ulquiorra had released his second  _resurección_. For the human boy to have pushed him to that all on his own was unthinkable.

Upon closer inspection of the scene, he realized that Ulquiorra was not only at his final release…

…He was  _disintegrating_.

The Sexta felt disoriented at the turn of events. His ears rang with white noise as he stared numbly at the dying Espada. That, and he felt a smidgen of very real fear.

Because standing before the defeated body of the Cuatro, facing down the Espada's look of resignation as he passed, was a monster that was new to the battlefield.

It was obviously Kurosaki, Grimmjow noted as he examined the long firey orange hair spilling down from beneath the back of the Hollow skull, reminiscent of his own. Also much like Grimmjow's own transformed feet, the boy's appendages had metamorphosed into bleach-white talons, cruel like hooks. Strange fur sprouted from odd places, adding a particular savagery to the look.

And his mask...

It had conquered his face completely, the permanent snarl of prominent teeth and the eye sockets as empty as the hole in his chest telling the former Espada that this was not the same boy he'd left behind a short time ago. The dangerous horns sprouting from his head, curved like wicked scythes, dared him to make an approach.

Ulquiorra said nothing as he vanished into dust, merely fixing Grimmjow with a final, heavy stare, as if to say,  _You did this_. The blue-haired man did not lament the loss, but certainly felt the impact of his death as he dissolved away, averting his gaze before his demise was complete. Ulquiorra was more than a worthy opponent; Ulquiorra had stood for what he strived to be, once upon a time.

A stone-cold master of death.

When the Cuatro was gone, the Sexta was left alone with the strange hybrid before him. He stiffly stood his ground, posture straight and commanding as his tail twitched almost rhythmically. He was focused wholly on the transformed Shinigami, his glare sharp beneath the crown of bone across his brow.

The boy turned.

Grimmjow did not even flinch when the empty eye sockets landed on him. Darker than black, they seemed to actually suck light into them like a tiny abyss.

He was not afraid. This new Hollow was no more monstrous than he was, he knew. The former Espada knew evil.

He  _was_  evil, no matter what good the girl thought she saw in him.

His challenging grin was wide and toothy, his fangs flashing at Ichigo in challenge.

"So what's it going to be, dog shit?" he spat. "If you're going to forget the whole reason you're here, then I have no problem erasing you right now. You're no longer of any use to me," he threatened.

There was a notable pause.

Ichigo's jaw opened slightly, and a cloud of condensation escaped his skeletal teeth like a sigh of steam. Grimmjow could hear the eerie echo of the teenager's distorted voice buzzing in the background.

It was pissing him off.

Springing into action, he practically vanished from place with a sudden Sonido then reappeared at the formerly human boy's side. As he brought his elbow crashing down onto the white skull, he was shocked when the clang of his arm blades resonated against the ivory claws of his opponent. Reevaluating, he cursed under his breath and executed a series of backflips to build some distance again.

He was fast.

Grimmjow grit his teeth and braced himself to battle anew.

* * *

 

Everything had changed, and in such a short time, too. Something was wrong with Kurosaki-kun, and now she was certain she felt Grimmjow's reiatsu hardening in conflict with her that of her longtime friend.

So it was really tremendously convenient when Ishida suddenly appeared to her on the battlefield, ready to save her from the contingent of Hollows holding her "hostage". When he recognized Bawabawa, it suddenly made her truncated explanation to him somewhat easier to digest.

She was helping a rebel faction in their own fight against Aizen, taking the battle directly to his source of power while the Shinigami contingent fought him on another front. His glasses glinted in the false desert sunlight, concealing his eyes from her desperate gaze as he considered her position.

When they both felt the struggle that Ichigo was quite evidently going through, their eyes met as they wordlessly agreed on their next course of action.

She firmly apologized to Grimmjow's Fracción as he tried to stop her, certain that a deviation like this was not in his master's plans for the girl. But she was resolute, because this was Kurosaki-kun, after all, nor would the Quincy have any of this strange Arrancar's resistance, either.

They left the frustrated Hollows behind so that they could investigate the mysterious storm brewing at the edges of their senses.

* * *

 

Grimmjow's left arm was scorched, along with a chunk of his once-long hair. His ribcage ached, and he was certain he had quite a few fractures. His breathing was ragged.

This had turned into a Very Bad Situation.

This new version of Kurosaki was monstrously powerful. It was all he could do to avoid his attacks. Forget about landing one of his own; it was like this new form was in a league all on its own.

In fact, it reminded Grimmjow of a Vasto Lorde.

He shook the thought away as soon as it flittered into his mind. There was no way the human-Shinigami hybrid before him could honestly have that kind of power. This Kurosaki boy was enough of a pain in the ass as he was; Grimmjow didn't need him becoming some kind of intriguing mystery, too. He'd already wasted enough time obsessing over this particular rival of his, he thought with some self-loathing. Ichigo would no longer plague his thoughts.

Well, that was as long as he could survive this particular battle, he thought to himself wryly.

Then, there was always the incredibly satisfying reminder that it was  _him_  that Orihime was fighting alongside, not this uppity child with an identity crisis before him. The flash of her grey eyes in his memories almost made him smile.

His sudden thoughts of her surprised him. He was usually quite good about keeping his mind on the battlefield, and distractions like the girl were typically never something he had trouble keeping at bay. He wondered for a moment how far she had gotten. If that  _Fracción_  of his had dared to let anyone lay a hand on her, he would personally rain hell down upon his head, he thought possessively.

A growl from the "Hollow" before him snapped his thoughts back to the present.

The monster formerly known as Kurosaki was not looking at him. Instead, his empty look passed over the multiple other holes in the roof he'd created thus far and back to the original opening that Grimmjow himself had come through.

Grimmjow followed his gaze, and he felt his nonexistent heart drop through the bottom of his stomach.

"Well, shit."

* * *

 

Orihime's searching eyes scanned the desolation before her with fright. Was Ulquiorra responsible for this destruction?

Ishida-kun had used a newly developed power to raise them up to the rooftop at her request, collecting  _reishi_  below their footing and propelling them skyward. She was impressed by the ingenuity it took to develop such a skill, although she was largely unsurprised. Ishida was such a smart young man, after all.

She also ignored the pointed, concerned glances he was indiscreetly sending her way, pretending instead not to notice them. Ishida-kun's regard for her always confused her terribly, and she was never sure if it was merely friendly concern or perhaps something more. He was such a reserved individual that it was hard to tell the difference, so she instead pretended to be oblivious.

That was not difficult now, though, as she searched the rubble for any sign of Grimmjow or Kurosaki-kun. She was certain they were both here; their respective  _reiatsu_  were raging.

"There!"

Orihime's head snapped around at the sound of Ishida's voice bouncing across the ruins. Sure enough, her eyes landed on the splash of bright blue painted against the demolition. The sight of him almost brought tears to her eyes.

"Gri-…"

"What the  _fuck_  are you two doing here?!" he called out to them, his deep voice carrying far.

Orihime flinched, rather expecting such a reaction from him but still feeling guilty. Then, building her courage, she responded. "Something felt… wrong," she said to him more resolutely than she felt, hoping his hearing was acute and that his feline ears were not just for show. She slowly began picking her way over the debris and to his side. After a quick scan around, she asked, "Where… where is Kurosaki-kun?"

She barely saw the desperate look cross Grimmjow's face when she suddenly heard a strange warping noise next to her, the sound of the very air distorting with the speed of the new appearance.

Her wide eyes slowly raised to take in this new, unfamiliar monster standing tall over her. It looked down at her with unseeing empty sockets, and she could not help the flash of a memory that paralyzed her, that reminded of her brother's cold Hollow eyes before she was attacked once upon a time. Her mouth gaped open in a wordless pause.

Uryuu scrambled to react, recovering from his shock more quickly than the girl. "Inoue-san!" he cried, his glowing bow materializing instantaneously in his grasp.

The monster's white, taloned hand flew out and struck the young man across the face, flinging him a short distance with a noise that made Orihime's gut twist. The girl cried out.

Then, she too was struck.

The choked sound that escaped Grimmow's throat came unbidden. His muscles coiled, and he sprang with a speed he did not know his exhausted and battered body was still capable of. With a cry, he arced his claws down onto Kurosaki.

Again, his hand was caught.

This time, the Hollow gripped his arm and swung the former Espada in a half-circle, driving his body into the stone beneath them.

Ichigo planted one of his clawed feet on the side of Grimmjow's face, pressing the prostrate man further into the ground. Grimmjow grit his teeth at the humiliation, his fury intensifying and his desire to destroy turning his vision red with rage. His feet kicked wildly at his oppressor, hind claws ripping into his sides repeatedly, only to have to do so again when the gashes healed up immediately. His obsidian hand strangled the wrist above his face, long fingers tangled in coarse fur as his claws rent the flesh there as well in desperation.

He felt an entirely different emotion plummet down his core when he saw the ambient red glow of a Cero in his peripherals. The foot still on his face prevented him from turning to face the attack outright.

He was about to be blasted by an  _actual_  Cero fired by a  _Shinigami_  at point-bank range.

He struggled mightily against the weight pinning him in place, unwilling to simply bow to this opponent, overwhelming as he was right now. He felt the dark warmth of the attack grow, and he fleetingly realized that Kurosaki was charging it between the horns atop his head.

_Fucking fuck,_ he thought to himself eloquently.

"Kurosaki-kun!" he heard the hoarse voice of Orihime cry.

_Fuck!_ he repeated in his mind.  _Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck SHIT!_

Then, the blessed golden glow he loved so much washed out the red of the Cero, just as he felt it get released.

Crimson light collided against the wall she’d erected, averting his imminent death. Somehow, Orihime's shield seemed to be deflecting the worst of the attack, but the proximity of the blast meant that there was only so much Grimmjow could escape.

The next moments were a turbulent mess. The former Espada saw black as he was forcibly tossed by the power of the blast being deflected. His senses were overwhelmed: his ears were filled with the roar of destructive energy crumbling the very rock beneath them; his nostrils were filled with smells of charred flesh and hair and dust; his eyes were shut tight against the indistinguishable energies all around him.

When he began regaining his bearings, he rolled himself to his side, propping his upper body up with one arm. He spit out a sharp tooth – one that he was sure would regrow in mere minutes, given his regenerative abilities – and he groaned loudly.

"Fuck!" he finally said aloud.

He shook his head to clear it and tried to unscramble his vision in order to assess the current situation. His ears were ringing, and black spots danced across his sight. He looked up.

The unfamiliar human boy that Orihime had come with was on his knees, Kurosaki's long Zanpakuto embedded deep in his belly.

When Grimmjow's gaze slid over to the girl, his claws dug into the rock beneath him.

She was there, just  _sitting there_ , looking up at Kurosaki as he closed in on her with this pathetic look, doing  _nothing_  with tears in her eyes like her heart was breaking into a million pieces.

Grimmjow could hear the boy’s distorted voice saying  _something_ , but he cared little for empty words born from madness when her _Orihime’s life was at stake._

When he saw signs of another Cero charging between those wicked horns, now pointed straight at the prostrate girl, his instincts took over.

Orihime could do nothing but stare up at this horrible form Ichigo had taken on as he closed in on her. What  _happened_  to him, she wondered desperately. Tears welled in her eyes as her heart swelled with agony, pity, and so many other unnamed emotions.

"Kurosaki-kun?" she said softly.

When the Hollow's step faltered, she felt hope. He stopped his slow approach, merely staring.

" _Save… her."_

Orihime's heart froze. The words came from Ichigo's skeletal jaws, and they sounded ghoulish. It almost sounded like he was speaking through whirring fan blades.

_'Save… her?' Save who?_  she thought to herself, her mind scrambling.  _Save… me? Am I… am I the reason he's like this?_  she realized with immense horror.

Her face was paralyzed with fright as he began charging another Cero at the apex between his horns. At this practically point-blank range, there was no way she could dodge it.

Kurosaki-kun would kill her here.

Her heart seemed to stop in her chest as the world around her came to a pause. Sound, color, temperature… everything turned silent and transparent as the attack meant for her swelled between those horns.  Acceptance washed over her body, because this was _Kurosaki-kun,_ and it must have been meant to be.  She closed her eyes softly and waited for the blast.

It all seemed to unravel before Grimmjow in slow motion. He watched as Orihime seemed to just give up, opening herself to a fully powered, head-on attack by the crazed boy.

A strange emotion tore through his chest. She was just sitting there, ready to simply accept the executioner's axe. And he knew just why, too. If it hadn't been for the fact that somewhere, behind that skull-like mask was her precious Kurosaki, she would be fighting back. She would keep trying to live, not succumbing to some misled martyrdom borne of her ill placed affection for this ungrateful brat.

Kurosaki was getting in his way  _again,_ but this time Grimmjow had so much more at stake to lose.

Fueled by a desperation he'd never before experienced, the Arrancar's mind went blank and his claws began to glow. He hadn't realized he had anything left in him. Using reserves of energy borne of crisis, he released his most powerful attack.

The  _Desgarrón_  cut through the night sky like ten azure blades, slicing through the powerful Cero and scattering its destructive energy. Bits of Ichigo's concentrated reiki shattered like glass, raining down on the battlefield.

As if not-dying immediately was some sort of cue, Orihime's subconscious erected her Santen Kesshun for her. She clutched her head in her hands and screamed as much of Ichigo's dispersed attack pelted her shield, bursting through the golden triangle in places like bullets through a window. She flinched at every penetration, but managed to avoid the worst of it.

Then it was over.

Her head was clutched in her hands, gaze shut tightly against the vision of destruction. When, after silent moments crawled past and nothing further happened, she cracked her eyes open.

"I-… Inoue?"

Her throat closed at the sound of Ichigo's voice, clear and confused. Knowing the risk had passed, she looked up at the boy she'd once promised to love for five lifetimes.

One of the curved horns that jutted from his mask had been severed, sliced through by what her subconscious knew to be the former Sexta Espada's attack. She could sense the traces of his  _reiki_  still attached to it.

His expression was that of a lost child, completely unaware of what had just transpired, what destruction he had caused. As he took in the damage, the sight of Ishida holding his stomach, and Orihime – battered and bloody – looking up into his face imploringly, the pieces started to fall into place.

"Wh-… where is Ulquiorra?"

He didn't need the girl before him to answer, because the look that passed over her face spoke volumes. Her eyebrows rose at the center and her eyes welled with tears, not for despair of any one thing, but instead for the loss of so much. It was such a pitying look that Ichigo felt the grief well up inside.

"I need to go help Ishida-kun," Orihime whispered, having no idea what to say and instead doing the only thing she knew she could accomplish mechanically. She picked herself up from the crumpled mess she was in on the ground. Her dress was irreparably dirtied, torn all over and far from the pristine white it once was. She moved slowly, sore and weary. Her fairies flew out ahead of her to attend to Uryu while she clutched an injured arm and bit her lip, wondering what she could possibly say to Ichigo to make things better.

"I should put you down where you stand, Shinigami," came the scathing, ragged threat. Ichigo turned surprised eyes onto the new voice, his protective nature kicking in but his subconscious telling him to stand down.

Grimmjow – blood seeping from a cut somewhere under his bone headpiece, hair hacked in several places and body singed all over – stood tall and imposing, his savage  _resurección_ sneering down at the slightly shorter human boy with loathing.

"You almost killed her. I should cut you up into little bits and feed you to a Menos, you scum." Grimmjow watched as Ichigo visibly flinched under his scorn, his shame compiling with every new revelation.

"Grimmjow, stop. Please." Both men turned to look at the young woman, hands held over the golden shield of healing suspended over Uryuu's center. Her hair hung loose, obstructing her eyes from their view.

Grimmjow snapped.

"Fine. Have your fucking knight in shining armor then. I don't give a flying fuck if he eats your face off next time! I'll be over there, going back to fighting the battle I've been planning for a century now instead of making sure you're  _alive_."

Grimmjow's fangs flashed with his rage, and Orihime finally turned to look at him. It was too late by then, though, and the Espada had turned in anger and launched himself on his black paws toward the opening in the roof below them, his tail whipping behind him.

Orihime could do nothing but watch him go, her heart torn in two between the boy struggling before her and the man moving away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys someone drew fanart for my story and I am seriously flipping the fuck out. It's so good. It's not public yet, so I won't link it, but I'm like, exploding on the inside. EXPLODING.
> 
> In other news, check out what I imagine Grimmjow looked like when he burst back onto the scene in Las Noches, ready to start a war with an army of Hollows at his back:
> 
> [The Lord of the Swords: The Return of the King](http://fav.me/d8axakv)
> 
> by 13Swordz. Teh smex.


	25. "...I'm Inside You"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow masters the art of confrontation.
> 
> Confront Orihime. Avoid confrontation with Aizen. Confront Aizen. Be confronted with a lot of blood loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa sorry for the delay. I have no excuse other than life.

When he finally arrived at the center stage battlefield, Grimmjow’s very fingers itched with eagerness. He alighted on a stone overhang, compelled to observe the scene before him silently as his wounds continued to mend themselves slowly. His ebony claws clicked softly on the rock beneath his hands.

This was it: the part where he made ready to confront his former master and unseat the vile overlord once and for all. The anticipation of a hundred years simmered beneath the surface of his armored skin – had he been any less disciplined, he would have fidgeted. Patience was a virtue many seemed to suspect he did not possess.

They could not have been more wrong.

His earlier disgust with the girl – _Orihime_ , he reminded himself bitterly – had withdrawn somewhat, forced aside and compartmentalized for later. A part of him already knew that anger was actually directed at himself; his begrudging admittance would have to wait for another time when he could entertain the distraction. His focus needed to be here and on the battlefield.

The Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13, himself, had challenged Aizen.

As his crystalline eyes scrutinized the situation, they narrowed in disbelief. Aizen could not even be bothered to fight this battle himself.

The traitorous former Shinigami had sent a pawn in his place.

The simple Wonderweiss had undergone a grotesque transformation, reminding Grimmjow of everything he hated about Aizen. The disregard with which the cruel mastermind used the simpleton was borderline obscene. The half-functional Arrancar was less than a mere pawn to their master; he was an expendable attack dog, beneath humans, below even Shinigami.

He was less than dirt to Aizen, because he was a _Hollow_.

Grimmjow’s teeth grinded in his ears. His pride would not take such discrimination lying down.

The former Shinigami spared no emotion when the underling met his end at Yamamoto’s skillful manipulation of _Kido_. Then, Aizen's words upon Wonderweiss' violent demise merely stoked the ice cold fire of Grimmjow’s loathing as they tickled on the edge of his hearing.

"A soul that has become a Hollow has no purpose. It does nothing more than meaninglessly hunt down souls to prey on.” His next question, rhetorical at best, came out as a dangerously seductive purr.

"What is so cruel about granting meaning to such an existence?"

The old Shinigami Captain-Commander clearly would have none of Aizen's prattle, and he advanced on his former traitorous subordinate with lethal purpose. Grimmjow, however, felt his own cold rage curdle in his stomach like sour milk. Every carefully chosen word oozing from Aizen’s lips was like a sweet-smelling poison, his drawl convincing despite their clearly pornographic meaning. The former Sexta’s hackles raised in rage, his mane bristling in a sizzling animalistic fury.

Then, the battlefield was suddenly consumed by an inferno.

Grimmjow counted himself fortunate when he found his vantage point only left him on the fringes of Wonderweiss' unexpected martyrdom. He noticed that the Captain-Commander did not fare nearly so well, and the self-destruction left him practically incapacitated.

It seemed Aizen had yet another victory to tally.

Yet, as Grimmjow continued to look on calculatingly, his partially-healed wounds throbbing as they continued mending themselves with his extraordinary regenerative abilities, he began to notice his potential opening.

Aizen was getting cocky. Grimmjow was familiar with such hubris, he thought with some self-accusation, and as such could readily recognize it in his former ruler. He was taking immense pleasure in this supposed surefire victory, and he did not seem to notice the resolve remaining in Yamamoto's tense posture there in the dirt.

This could be his chance.

Aizen drew his sword, now nearly atop the leader of the Gotei 13. With every echoing step he watched him take, Grimmjow's muscles tensed and coiled, ready to attack.

When Yamamoto’s surprise  _Kido_  engulfed the shocked Aizen, Grimmjow sprang into action. Muscles burning, he concentrated his reserves of energy into the tips of his claws until they began glowing. With all of his might, he descended upon the former Captain as he escaped from the cloud of debris.

" _Desgarrón_!"

The cry that accompanied the ultimate attack boomed over the roar of  _reiki_  that Grimmjow poured into his claws. He felt an ember of satisfaction in his belly at the look of surprise on Aizen's face, and that soon fueled the kindling that was his hope.

He felt it. He felt as his azure claws tore into Aizen's shoulder, rending his supposedly untouchable flesh in an unmistakable blow. No illusion could have imitated that satisfying sensation for the Arrancar. His lip curled over his fang with adrenaline and victory.

Grimmjow's pleasure was short-lived, though.

When Aizen recovered and parried Grimmjow's next series of blows, it did little to dampen his spirits. The disturbing smirk on the former Shinigami's face, though, pissed him the hell off.

"What the fuck are you smiling at?" the Sexta snarled at his former master.

Aizen merely chuckled, veering to the side and missing a swipe of claws by inches. "I will admit, you were always rebellious, Grimmjow, but the extent of your insubordination has come as a surprise to me. And taking the girl, too!" he tsked, looking around as if expecting to see Orihime hovering on the sidelines. He heard the low growl building in Grimmjow’s chest and capitalized on the reaction.

"While she may have served her role of luring the Shinigami armies here, I admit I was hoping to take advantage of her exceptional powers. Maybe even give her to Szayel for some… tests." He curled his mouth into an oily smile.

Grimmjow sneered. "Don't give me that shit! You never had any intention to use her for anything," he accused. "What a waste of potential."

This gave Aizen pause, and he eyed Grimmjow shrewdly. The Arrancar faltered at his slight change in demeanor, then braced himself for the poison that was sure to pour from his mouth.

"Do you remember, Grimmjow? Being one of the first?" Aizen asked his former subordinate quietly, thoughtfully. The former Espada could not have heard him if he hadn't been so close. "Your  _Fracción_ came to me in the beginning, testing the waters for their leader. They were  _so loyal_ , weren't they?" Grimmjow's brow twitched as his arm trembled, his claws struggling to hold the Shinigami’s blade at bay. _That_ particular wound was still quite fresh, and it seemed Aizen knew just which buttons to push.

"Then you went and got them killed." The wound was rent open again. Grimmjow grit his fangs.

"Now what about this girl, though? Is it possible that the young princess has tamed the beast?" he mulled, dry amusement lacing his tone. "Or are you going to let her get slaughtered, too?" Grimmjow's eyes narrowed at the amusement in his voice. Aizen continued, his excitement bleeding into his increasingly accusatory tone. "This is really too perfect. The loose-cannon Sexta Espada allowing himself such a weakness. A  _woman_." His voice grew harsher. "Tell me: how _did_ you convince her to come with you? Did you threaten her? Seduce her? Is the little princess merely a harlot in disguise, eager to jump at the chance of joining a monster like you?"

Grimmjow snarled at Aizen finally, shoving at his blade and backing away to create some distance between the two. The language was uncharacteristic of the usually formal Shinigami Captain, but the attempt to unseat his opponent mentally was very much in his personality.

Regrouping, Grimmjow made a noise of frustration when his renewed physical attack was repeatedly parried by Aizen's blade, claws clanging against metal.

"You've gotten stronger, Grimmjow," Aizen said almost proudly over the noise of the clash. The Hollow’s disgust was compiling.

"When do you shut up?" he hissed. "Are you just trying to talk off the fact that I just ripped you open?" He was referring to the earlier blow his _Desgarrón_ had landed, blood still seeping from the jagged edges of the frayed flesh along the Shinigami’s shoulder.

Aizen merely smirked again and looked down at the wound as if noticing a mosquito bite. "You seem very proud of this, Grimmjow," he said, patronization oozing from his words.

The former Espada watched in horror as the injury began mending itself before his eyes.

"Rapid regeneration…?" he questioned under his breath, astonished. This made Aizen no different than Ichigo, now.

"No, fool," he purred. "This is so much more than that. I am not merely undergoing Hollowfication like that substitute Shinigami. No." The hair on the back of Grimmjow's neck stood on end as he watched. Aizen slowly pulled open his  _haori_.

There, in the center of his chest where his sternum would have been, was the eerie prismal shimmer of the dark Hougyoku embedded in his body. It seemed to generate power like a heartbeat.

"No…" Grimmjow gasped desperately. Aizen had already merged the relic with his own body. Now how was Orihime supposed to reject it?

Tendrils of panic began grasping at his throat. Was he too late? Did Ulquiorra and that _fucking_ Shinigami boy waste so much of his time that his plan was ruined?

He shook his head. Orihime wasn't here. It was time for a new plan. He'd have to win this without her, anyway. He reengaged his opponent with a roar.

The next few minutes of battle were like a whirlwind. Grimmjow's overall condition had improved from his fight with Kurosaki, but he could tell that the former Shinigami captain before him was pulling his punches. His black feet flew out to land a roundhouse kick, but his paw was caught and his momentum redirected. He crashed into a cliff face before he knew what hit him.

Aizen appeared before him with a  _shunpo_ , looking down his nose at the Arrancar embedded in the rock.

"You're fucking filth," Grimmjow cursed, spittle glimmering with the red of his blood staining the Shinigami traitor's cheek. Aizen recoiled in disgust.

"And yet you are at my mercy, you worthless animal," he hissed in return, his mask of propriety cracking with his long-contained revulsion for the Sexta. "You always were a gamble, Grimmjow. One of my very first and most successful creations, and one of my most expendable. Yet your resilience has turned you into a pestilence for my plans." He waved a hand to gesture at the throngs of Hollows warring in the distance. "I should have eliminated you the moment Tousen ripped your arm off." Grimmjow snarled again and pulled himself from the rubble to lunge wildly.

Aizen caught his clawed hand in his own, and Grimmjow's eyes widened with shock and the knowledge that in his impulsiveness he had made a costly mistake.

With a violent slash, Aizen sliced clean through the  _hierro_  hardening Grimmjow's skin, carving into his pectoral and snapping the ribs beneath, reaching his vitals under even that. Blood erupted like a geyser from the wound. The former Shinigami captain took a moment to catch his breath, a wild look of triumph blossoming on his face before it became closed with the return of his control.

"Aizen!" The Sexta's eyes slid sluggishly to the blurry form of the substitute Shinigami rushing to his aid. He sat back on his heels, the blood flowing freely.  _Funny,_ he thought.  _I don't remember kneeling._

As if from behind glass, he watched Ichigo Kurosaki, garbed in the long black haori of his Bankai but clear of the haunted look of Hollowfication, plow into Aizen from the side, catching the powerful leader off-guard.

As he lost blood, his vision tunneled, and he heard nothing but silence from the likely deafening battle before him. His senses grew detached one-by-one, and he began to feel his equilibrium spinning as he slowly tilted to the side.

When he didn't immediately faceplant, his awareness momentarily returned to him.

"…-jow! Grimmjow!"

He flinched at the assault to his sensitive ears. "Don't yell, stupid," he slurred. "I'm right here."

He turned his head slowly to look down at the girl into whose arms he had slumped. _Where the hell did she come from?_ Tear stains trailed down her face – it reminded him of that stupid bat – and her eyes were rimmed with red.

"What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be eating that kid's face right now or something?" he asked her drunkenly in a bastardization of his earlier accusation. He felt as she hefted his heavy body more upright again, struggling against his dense and limp weight. The thought of helping her crossed his mind, then vanished again when he remembered how tired he was.

"Stop talking so I can heal you," she ordered in a watery voice, clearly mad at him. He hummed as two fairies sparkled from her hairpins and enshrouded him in a welcome golden glow.

"I should eat  _your_ face right now," he mulled, making plenty of sense to himself. He had lost a great deal of blood. "Stop touching my face," he corrected absently when he felt her warm hands on his cheek.

"I'm not."

"Oh." Then, "…Why not?"

Orihime laughed.

A moment of silence passed between the two as her powers began mending his gruesome wounds. Awareness returned to him more fully, and he felt her softness on him, one arm wrapped around his middle and the hand from the other resting on his chest. She paid no attention to the battle as she watched the progress her fairies made on his injuries, and he couldn’t help the tinge of satisfaction that _he_ was all she was looking at. He, in turn, watched Kurosaki taking up Aizen's attention with his assault. Bawabawa and his new  _Fracción_ were nearby, as well, keeping any threats away, and as his faculties returned Grimmjow was starting to conjecture how they had gotten here. He turned to look at the top of the young woman's sienna hair.

"D'you knock some sense into fruit-brain over there?" he mumbled, both eager for and afraid of the answer.

Orihime shifted beneath him, and she refused to meet his eyes just yet. Then she spoke softly. "Kurosaki-kun couldn't control it," she said defensively. "I think… I think he's better, now, though. You saved him, Grimmjow," she said, gratefulness lacing her tone.

Grimmjow snorted. "Great. That's exactly what I was aiming to do," he said sarcastically.

She was silent again, words escaping her. She concentrated harder on her powers. He watched as one of his black hands, seemingly of its own accord, lifted a strand of hair behind her back, twisting it gently and watching how the colors shifted in the light.

Grimmjow sighed deeply once it didn't hurt too badly. "You should get out of here," he said quietly. Orihime's eyes finally shot to his face in shock.

"But… the Hougyoku…"

"We'll defeat him without that. You need to take this chance for what it is and escape. Go home. Get out of here." He'd turned away from her by this point, unwilling to watch as she made her decision and instead seeing the battle play out.  _She doesn't belong here._

This time, there was no mistaking the feel of her hand on his cheek. Her fingers alighted on his jawline, delicate but demanding as she urged him to face her. His eyes returned to hers, and he was surprised to see such an earnest expression on her face.

"I'm not leaving you, Grimmjow. We're going to stop him together," she said with conviction, her gray eyes searching his. They scanned his face, and an unfamiliar tenderness flooded him with warmth when she tried to smile. "You can't get rid of me that easily. You still haven't told me what your favorite food is!" she joked with difficulty.

He felt as some of the tension left his shoulders inexplicably, and he leaned forward. Orihime closed her eyes as his lips rested on her forehead and his nose buried itself in her hair, not quite leaving a kiss but lingering as he breathed in her scent. Her fairies had stopped healing him minutes ago, and neither of them had noticed.

"You're stupid," he rumbled warmly against her skin.

"I know," she whispered back, a smile in her voice.

He didn't expect her admission to make him as happy as it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh-kay. Oh my gosh. This incredible artist did incredible fanart of this fanfic back in December and I am *still* over the moon. What are you waiting for, GO SEE IT!
> 
> http://fav.me/d9kp5ae 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	26. "Forever and Ever..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The climactic battle is upon them, and there is no room for martyrdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember reading once that Orihime's favorite food was actually animal crackers.

Orihime knew he could not stay for long.

She took particular solace in the strong breaths she could feel tickling the hairs atop her head, and she savored the feel of his lips ghosting across her brow.

She pushed back the cold fingers of dread that tried to grip her stomach again, reminding her of the state she’d discovered him in.

Aizen had carved into Grimmjow’s body, his armor more crimson than white by the time she had reached him. The chasm created in his chest cavity alone was something she could not bring herself to examine too closely, afraid she would observe something that was never meant to see daylight.

She was grateful to Kurosaki-kun for so completely distracting Aizen, because she could not find it in herself to spare a thought for anything but Grimmjow’s wellbeing. She had been consumed with dread, with terror, and righteous anger.

She refused to entertain the guilt that clawed for attention.

There was nothing she would have done differently. Nothing she _could_ have done differently. So much had happened in so little time. Grimmjow was not wrong in his frustration with her; he _had_ been risking a hundred years’ worth of careful planning on her wellbeing, and for that she was utterly grateful, but it was nevertheless _his_ decision.

She found herself again a little afraid to truly define what it was she felt for him. Meandering down this mental path the past few days had her more nervous than sure, and wasn’t love supposed to be sure? _No, no,_ not _love,_ she reminded her subconscious frantically. She could at the very least acknowledge that he meant a great deal to her. Possibly more than anyone ever had since Sora.

More even than Kurosaki-kun.

But that _certainly_ did not mean that she needed his permission to care just as much about her other friends. Tensions had been high and emotions running wild – she could give him that excuse for his reaction. But she would not be stopped from protecting _all_ the people that were precious to her.

She shook her head when she realized she was lingering on a drama was past and opening. The movement served to nuzzle into Grimmjow’s pseudo-affections.

He chuckled. “Zoning out again, Space Cadet?” he rumbled into her hair. She hid her smile into his chest momentarily, regaining some composure before she pulled away to meet his gaze.

“What now?” she asked. She marveled at the soft look he imparted from beneath his bony crown before his expression hardened again for battle.

“Nothing has changed. He’s absorbed the device into his body; that doesn’t mean it’s immune to your powers.” He returned his attention to the battle being fought. “Now we carry on as planned.”

He planted his clawed hand atop her head and ruffled her hair, eliciting an indignant yelp from the girl.

“Your turn to kick his ass, Princess. Don’t let me down.”

With that he stood to his full impressive height, waiting for a moment so that Orihime could scramble to her feet beside him.

“How will I know when it’s time?” she asked his back. He spared her a disarming glance over his shoulder.

“I’ll make sure you know,” he growled.

Then he was off entering the fray, leaving the young woman behind to wait for his signal.

She was a paralyzed spectator at this point.

The Arrancar returned to the battlefront to fight alongside Ichigo once again. She was still unused to this new dynamic between them, where they put away their substantial differences to meet a common goal. Kurosaki-kun was good at making that sort of thing happen, though.

 _She_ was good at making that happen. Both had been fully healed thanks to Orihime's powers, and Aizen found their reinvigorated assault to be more challenging than he'd anticipated.

Orihime was supposed to be paying attention, waiting for the perfect opening to launch her specialized attack on the Hougyoku. Instead, she was reminded of every other time she'd watched Grimmjow fight, the demonstration of his strength and skill mesmerizing, even in the face of someone so much more powerful than he. His combined efforts with Kurosaki-kun made it especially intense to watch. His _Fracción_  was spot-on with his description: seeing him fight  _was_  like watching water dance. Some moments it was fluid and graceful, like a cold, quick-moving mountain stream. Other times he struck with the intensity of a whitecap crashing violently onto the rocks, a powerful shock of white and noise that rose from a burbling growl to a roar of action. Each swing of his legs was followed by the swirl of his mane or the whip of his tail. Each strike of his ebony claws was met with a fanged grin, his snarl full of lust for battle. Even with Ichigo’s reliance on instinct and sheer power over experience, he still managed to understand how best to synchronize his strengths for their combined assault.

He was a man who had perfected the art of war over the past few hundred years, she realized. It was fascinating to watch.

Ichigo’s Zangetsu swung downwards with a thunderous roar of _reiatsu,_ the black sickle moon of spiritual energy crackling toward Aizen. When ten enormous blades of electric blue energy emerged behind them, they caught up and began a marvelous dance of power. The combination of attacks sprang forward toward the former Shinigami with singular purpose and murderous intent.

"Orihime, now!" yelled Grimmjow over the din of the attack, effectively snapping her out of her daze.

She looked to him first with a measure of surprise, realizing how much time had passed in her distraction and wondering if this was truly the moment she had been waiting for.

Then, she furrowed her brow with a look of determination. If she'd concluded anything after today, it was that she trusted Grimmjow's judgment.

It was her time to turn the tide of war.

Her hands were steady as she raised them before her, palms outward and fingers together, and she proclaimed her newest  _kotodama._

" _Shinsei Shouheki_!"

All of the petals on both of her hairpins began to glow brightly like white-hot metal. A short distance away, Grimmjow could feel his skin tingle with the warmth of her power that was unlike any he had ever seen. He tried his best to remain focused on his opponent, but he couldn't help but sneak a glance at the girl. He watched as she closed her eyes softly and took a cleansing breath, chest rising with the intake of air. She completed the incantation.

"I reject!"

The flower petals exploded from her temples like lit fuses, releasing all six of her familiars at once. They swirled in circles around her and up like a sparkling twister, her hair rising in the thermal current they created.

Orihime opened her eyes again and thrust both hands forward, her gaze unwavering as she sent her attack straight at the Hougyoku lodged in Aizen's chest.

Grimmjow and Ichigo took the cue, charging Aizen from two separate directions and distracting him from Orihime's upcoming strike. With a single outstretched hand, he caught the energies from their combined attack, allowing the blades of _reiatsu_ to scorch his entire arm as they whipped at him. Once the blasts had fizzled out, his burned flesh rapidly restored itself. The monster merely smirked.

The two men dodged the unusual protrusions that had recently sprouted from his back following his strange transformation, like a moth's wings bursting from a chrysalis. He grinned confidently, his unsettling inky black eyes focusing on Kurosaki, who he thought was the greater menace. He was unaware of the threat the girl posed as her power flew at him from beyond his line of sight. When he caught both warriors' attacks in either hand, he laughed.

When Orihime's fairies struck him from behind, he gasped.

All six of her Shun Shun Rikka were deployed. Tsubaki was the first to pierce his center, his powers of offensive rejection impaling the villain and carving a path for his siblings to begin the process of splitting the Hougyoku from its host.

Hinagiku, Lily, and Baigon came next, their shield small and precise as they began revolving around the object, severing the places where his flesh connected to it as they spun like a golden discus.

Grimmjow and Ichigo held on to either arm, preventing him from reaching for the agonizing foreign intrusion. Aizen realized here that his powerful counter had played into their ploy all along. He cursed.

Ayame and Shun'ou were last. Their healing shield wrapped around the Hougyoku, encasing it in a temporal wedge and effectively placing it in a dimension all of its own.

Aizen let loose an agonized cry as all six of the Shun Shun Rikka jerked outwards, ripping the Hougyoku from his chest.

It was done.

 _She did it!_ both men thought to themselves excitedly.

But as the fairies began their return to their mistress, all six spinning endlessly around the new object, Grimmjow couldn't help but notice that Aizen's regression was not instantaneous as he'd hoped it would be. He grit his teeth and glanced over at Ichigo. The teenager had noticed the same.

With a furious roar, Aizen lashed out at both his detainers, desperately wrenching himself free of their grasp. Orihime saw from a distance that inky pitch had seeped into the whites of his eyes, making his gaze chillingly hostile. He would come after her immediately if Grimmjow and Ichigo could not contain him again.

Thinking quickly, Orihime diverted her familiars, realizing that if she sent them away from her, then Aizen would be stuck having to choose between two targets.

Her stroke of genius was short-lived, though, when his maddened eyes chose to land on her, defenseless but for the  _Fracción_ and Adjuchas on guard.

Aizen charged.

Not even bothering to use  _Shunpo,_  he blasted straight through the two Hollows standing between them. They fell to the side, helpless in the face of his unspeakable power and loss of composure. Bawabawa's crash into the ground below shook her footing and jarred her insides, his animalistic bellow sounding like a beast of burden in its death throes.

The Shinigami usurper's teeth were bared and his rare expression twisted in rage as he began swinging his arm – transformed earlier into a blade – down upon her.

Orihime did not even bother to scream as she tucked her arms around her head and curled in on herself, squinting her eyes shut tight as if it could make the impending deathblow pass more quickly.

There was a muffled sound, unmistakable as a sword piercing flesh.

Her eyes peeled open when she distantly realized it was not her own.

Turning cautiously to face her attacker, she choked on a gasp when she realized what she was seeing.

"Grimmjow!" she shrieked.

"Hah," he chuckled once, without humor. Arms spread defensively, he stood over her. The weapon intended for her poked through his front, having passed all the way through. She could see cracks like a spider's web crawling outward on his bony armor plating from the point of exit, blood pushing out around the object in lazy spurts. Orihime saw flecks of red spray from his mouth. "Shit," he said simply.

The Espada jerked violently when the blade was yanked out of his back, crimson gushing out of the exit wound. Orihime made a choked noise.

Aizen kicked Grimmjow in the side, shifting his attention to the distraction as he rolled over twice before teetering back on his feet. Orihime screamed when he followed, striking him across the jaw with the flat of his blade then pounding him with the opposite fist. It was with a clenched jaw that he ran the blade deeply down his arm, shearing muscle from bone. Aizen had abandoned control in his fury, yet even then there was precision to his butchery.

His onslaught was short-lived. Ichigo once again sprang into action, taking advantage of the Hougyoku's separation from Aizen's body and attacking full force, ripping him from his victim. Grimmjow had tipped forward slightly, and Orihime tripped onto her feet to try to get to him and stop his fall. He slumped down onto the sand, eyes slipping shut before he could notice that he was staining everything terribly with his flowing blood.

"No, no, no, no..." she mumbled repeatedly as she scrambled to reach his crumpled form. "Don't you die on me." Her hands were everywhere once she made it to his side and she laid him out, whispering across his endless wounds before she tried to staunch the flow of blood from his center, just over his Hollow hole. "Grimmjow? Grimmjow, answer me." When she received no response, she reached up to his head, resting each cheek in the palms of her hands and searching his face for any fleeting sign of life. "Grimmjow, please. Please wake up," she pleaded, her voice cracking.

His eyebrow twitched.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to touch my face, you dumb broad?" he said weakly, barely audible. Orihime gasped in relief, then slapped him lightly on the shoulder, leaving a handprint with his own blood.

"Be nice, you dummy," she scolded through a tearful hiccup. Eyes still closed, Grimmjow grinned, blood seeping through his sharpened teeth and down his chin as he coughed painfully. Orihime checked on him, still concerned. "Where is it the worst?" she asked, referring to his injuries. They all looked grave, but the gaping wound at his center was what worried her the most as she returned to ineffectually trying to stop the bleeding.

"If I could point everywhere, I would," came his response with a groan, voice weakening. Orihime could no longer tell where his white armor segmented, cracked and bloody as it was. The bone across his brow seemed to be the only thing undamaged on his whole body. The king's crown, Orihime mused under her growing panic. “Are you alright?” he asked weakly, shocking her.

“I’m fine. You saved me again,” she whispered. He gave her another crimson flash of teeth and cracked open an eye to look her over. The contrast between his gem-blue iris and the red from burst blood vessels made her even more nervous.

She fretted when a cough racked his body terribly. He shuddered and blood poured down his chin. "Grimmjow, just hold on a little longer. I can't… I can’t stop the Shun Shun Rikka now. Not if they’re to finish…" She trailed off. She could sense their progress, and it seemed that with all six working together on the same task their efficiency increased exponentially. She bit her bottom lip hard, devastated that she could not use her powers to help him just yet. He would kill her if she stopped the fairies from following through, even if it  _was_  to save him.

She was torn.

"Don't you fucking dare," he said weakly, as if reading her mind. They knew each other well by now, after all. Orihime let out a tiny, helpless sob, then turned from the sight of him.

Something was happening in the battle between Ichigo and Aizen. Without the Hougyoku, the former Shinigami Captain could evolve no further, but the changes he had undergone so far seemed to ignite a chain of events that he could not come back from. And Ichigo…

He was changing again. This time, though, he was accepting it.

He would win.

"I don't know what to do," she admitted, returning to the crisis before her. Grimmjow cracked open his other shockingly blue eye to gaze at her.

She really was crying, he mused. He decided to scold her.

"You cry too much." She laughed once through her mess of tears. "You stop being hot when you cry. If I'm going to die here, I want you to look hot while you get all touchy-feely," he demanded. She laughed at his backhanded compliment, then tried to reassure him.

"You're not going to die, you drama king," she said in a small voice as she pushed aside his bangs with her fingers and a feather light touch, clearly trying to convince herself. "Just keep being your stubborn, insufferable self so we can get through this." Her fingers brushed his unusual ears, and Grimmjow shuddered at the touch to the fine fur there. He reached up with a clawed hand to grasp hers, stopping her from petting him any further. He did not let go, and she was warmed by the feeling of his strong grasp. He was careful with his dangerous claws.

"What's your favorite food?" he asked out of the blue. It took Orihime a moment to catch up with his question. Her gaze softened at his smalltalk before she answered gently.

"Red bean paste." Her tears came again when his face scrunched up.

"You're so fucking weird."

His armor shattered.

She made a noise of shock at the loud sound it made as it cracked all at once around his body and unraveled like hard white ribbons back into the hole at his center. His hand remained firmly wrapped around her own, but the dangerous black claws were replaced with cold, callused flesh. She reached out with her other hand and placed it on his left cheek, his right now adorned with the familiar jawbone of his unreleased form.

"Stay with me, Grimmjow. Please," she begged. His breathing was shallow and rapid, eyes closed again as if doing otherwise took too much energy. His face tilted slightly into her palm, his lips brushing against it. He could not muster the energy to respond with words. Orihime was terrified.

Grimmjow was dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and kudos give me life.


	27. "...I Am a Part of You"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cost of victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, chapter titles in quotation marks (that's most of them) are all lyrics from the song "We're In This Together Now" by Nine Inch Nails. The song goes with this fic like wine and cheese, beer and sports, vodka and poor life decisions. 
> 
> Also signing myself up for the Witness Protection Program after this.

She sobbed as strong hands pulled her away, wrestling her from her post at his side. She scrambled for purchase on his tattered shirt, alternately gripping it and clawing at the arms wrapping around her as she shrieked in unintelligible protest. Tears clouded her view of Grimmjow's form as they spilled down her cheeks.

She was practically dragged through the sand by well-intentioned friends who could not understand her desperation to return to the Arrancar's side. He was all but history, anyway, as his extremities began slowly and dramatically dissolving into a colorless ash. When Orihime noticed, she began thrashing about.

"No! No, you have to save him!" she cried shrilly between noises of protest, her voice breaking. She screamed her throat raw.

"Grimmjow!"

Then, from the other side of the battlefield came an explosion of light so bright, so powerful, that it washed out all color in the vicinity. She and her "savior", who she now noted to be Renji Abarai, shielded their eyes from the blinding nova.

The Hougyoku had been rejected.

Hueco Mundo itself seemed to hold its breath, and the burst of light shone in complete silence. The sight was beautiful, if devastating in its power. The light of her own abilities shimmered across Orihime's tear stricken but slack expression.

Then the shockwave reached them.

Like a massive bomb, the force from the sound alone blew back their hair and buffeted their clothing, and Renji took a bracing step backward at the absolute power that took them in the first wave.

Orihime did not budge an inch, though. As the pulses of sheer power rolled over them, the emotional young woman just stared, unflinching.

Along with the third shockwave came a comet of light heading straight for the expressionless girl. Renji panicked as he watched the dazzling fireball head straight for his charge, the tattoos on his brow morphing with his urgency.

"Orihime, MOVE!"

He watched helplessly as it continued its streak toward the girl. Cursing under his breath, he tensed up to rush to her aid, certain he wouldn't make it in time.

Just as he prepared to leap, the light burst into six streaks, enveloping the girl in a twister of sparks as they rushed in mad circles around her. She slowly looked up in wonder, then with barely a gesture sent two of the lights behind her and toward where he'd dragged her from the fallen Espada.

His bewilderment melted into some pity, though, when a broken cry left her lips.

Her fairies met nothing but empty sand, stained red with blood and divots where once there was a body.

Grimmjow was gone.

Orihime collapsed to her knees and screamed.


	28. "All That We Were is Gone"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do when you save the world and still don't get your happily ever after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my _God_ you guys, I'm so sorry.

It was three weeks before she managed to fall asleep without crying.

Two months later, and she had a part time job at the local boulangerie.

A year passed, and she had taken to adding a prayer for Grimmjow every day that she spoke to Sora's photo in her apartment. Without a picture for the Espada, she instead left a tiny stuffed cat on the memorial stand, along with a jar of red bean paste. She'd always hoped to be able to let him taste the condiment.

After the final battle ended and Kurosaki-kun emerged victorious, Renji had shepherded the girl to the rest of their friends. Devastated, she would not be consoled. Even Ichigo, once the center of her universe, could do nothing to staunch the flow of tears or stem the self-loathing that was eating away at the girl. Rangiku wrapped her in her arms and let her sob, understanding that now was not the time to ask questions of the savior of three worlds, but nevertheless wondering what – or whom – it was she was grieving so badly.

They took her home.

Orihime did not talk much about her incarceration, nor her escape. The questioning from Soul Society was minimal, after all the Seireitei was notorious for shirking outside assistance and underplaying its actual impact. They would sooner forget Orihime Inoue's involvement than romanticize her heroism.

Kurosaki was left dealing with his own personal problems in the months after the battle, where his final transformation ultimately stripped him of his substitute Shinigami powers. Chad and Ishida took it upon themselves to wear his mantle and assist whatever Soul Reaper from Seireitei that was assigned to Karakura. Orihime helped as often as she could, but she could sense the unease with which her assistance was accepted, given that she famously sided with Hollows in the War of Hueco Mundo. No one mentioned that without their uprising, things might have turned out much differently.

She tried not to let it bother her.

Life eventually moved on for everyone, and soon Orihime felt she was the only one that remembered the Sexta Espada at all.

"Tatsuki wiped out the competition at the quarterfinals, you know," she said to both the picture of Sora and the plush cat one evening, eighteen months after that final battle in Hueco Mundo. "She's so talented. Did you know that she used to always beat up Kurosaki-kun when they were kids? She says he was a big crybaby when they were little." She giggled sadly here. "I'll bet you would have loved to lord that over him, huh?" she asked the stuffed animal with tired humor.

She felt emotional today, she realized. Exam season was nearing, and her study sessions were lengthening. On top of her part time job at the bakery, her schoolwork was exhausting her. Coming home to her tiny, lonely apartment every day meant that she had nothing to distract her from her memories once her homework was done. The rawness of her broken heart had healed, but what was left behind was scarred and dull. Her cheer was there, but those closest to her saw past the superficial pep and missed seeing her smile genuinely.

No one amongst her closest friends knew how to get the girl to open up about it. Orihime even considered herself the perpetually sunny member of their group, and she knew that if she let her turmoil show, she would not be doing her job of keeping everyone else’s spirits up.

Tatsuki asked her what happened often in the beginning. Orihime wanted so much to open up to her best friend, but she knew that telling Tatsuki everything would simply embroil her in a complicated new world of ghosts, monsters, and undead warriors that she simply could not come back from. Orihime had to do her part to protect her best friend from the horrors that could come of her involvement.

That, and she might very well not believe Orihime. The story was, after all, fantastical enough to have come from the wildest depths of her colorful imagination. She did not know what she would do with herself if her best friend ever thought her a liar.

She sighed deeply, the sound heavy and solemn, then sat there in silence before her simple idols for a moment. Her stare was fuzzy as she escaped into some random, harmless fantasy. As she often found herself doing, Orihime tried to imagine Sora meeting Grimmjow.

She convinced herself that her brother would have liked him, at least after a little while.

He spent nearly a decade protecting her from harm, taking her from dangerous parents and raising her in a loving home. He would have appreciated the fact that Grimmjow had saved her – no, that he had convinced her to save herself. Having also become a Hollow, she could perhaps even venture to say that the two men held something in common.

She shook her head once. It was all stupid speculation, anyway.

They were both gone.

Orihime let loose a shuddering exhale. She lifted up off her knees and walked the few steps into the tiny kitchen, setting some water to boil so she could prepare tea. The sun had recently set, but the heavy clouds outside darkened the city early and promised a downpour any minute. Orihime looked forward to it.

She always did love the rain.

With an echoing boom of thunder, the heavens opened up on Karakura town, and she could hear the fat pellets of water bounce off her windowsill. She hummed an empty tune to herself as she stared at the simmering water, mechanically going through the motions as she waited for it to come to a rolling boil.

Harsh, negative  _reiatsu_  fried the edges of her senses like white lightning, and she dropped a teacup just as she pulled it out of the cabinet. A crash of thunder blended with the sound of the shattering ceramic, and she _felt_ a vicious growl rattle her down to her sternum all at the same time. The noises mixed so that they were nearly indistinguishable.

The lightning must have struck closer than she'd realized, because it had knocked out the power, and Orihime's small apartment was shrouded in darkness. The hair along her arms stood on end, and she willed the tremble out of her hands. The security lamp outside the window cast an eerily broken fluorescent gloom into the tiny room, and she backed herself against the cabinetry behind her instinctively. Her eyes were wide in fear as they darted from corner to corner, trying to adjust and identify the very real threat that was most certainly in her apartment.

Orihime bit her lip and mustered her courage, reminding herself that she was the savior of three worlds and a powerful person, and she hadn't made dinner yet and she was  _hungry,_ darn it.

"I'm w-warning you," she said as she mentally cursed the stutter on her lips, "I'm not nearly as helpless as you think." She thanked the heavens that she hadn't left her hairpins on the nightstand just yet. She hadn't been attacked by a Hollow in her own home since… her brother's tortured spirit ripped her soul from her body, she thought with a shudder. She was infinitely more prepared this time, though, as she slowly raised the fingers from one hand to the flower clips pinned to her shirt. Her visitor was still enshrouded in dangerous shadows, and she couldn't be distracted by memories.

Lightning lit up the room in three successive flashes, and Orihime was consumed by the glimpse of cold blue ice on a plane of white. A gasp tore from her throat as her world tilted off its axis.

That same frosted gaze had haunted her dreams for a year and a half now.

Her bones melted, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

She did not know if she should expect a voice from the boney muzzle before her, but the brittle whiskers flattened against feline cheeks, and a deep, hardly-used baritone stirred long-suppressed emotions.

"The little bird looks lonely no matter what cage she's trapped in." Huge paws, tipped with enormous ebony claws padded toward her slowly, cautiously. The crystalline irises set in onyx sclera never left her face as the sleek Adjuchas-class Menos made his guarded approach. He stopped, mere feet away from the girl immobilized by her own churning emotions.

"Hello, Princess," he growled softly through savage jaws, unsure.

His predator’s gaze shifted uneasily between her eyes, and there was such an earnestness hidden there behind the hunger that in an instant she forgot what it was to fear.

Orihime could not control the scalding, fat tears already streaming down her face. She ignored them as a mighty sniffle ripped from her sinuses, and she raised a trembling hand to touch the head of the tremendous panther before her.

Her fingertips alighted on the hard bone covering his jaw. When she made contact, his eyes shut softly, and she could feel his entire body shudder tremendously as his ears pinned back in relief. It was peculiar, how human the expression seemed on such a beastly countenance.

The Hollow leaned into her gentle touch, and she felt her heart break when he pushed his face so that his forehead bumped her cheek in a particularly feline show of affection. She proceeded to bury her tearstained face into his own bony skull, both her arms rising up to hold his head as shuddering sobs wracked her body.

The rain continued to come down in torrents outside, the white noise of droplets ending their plummet from the heavens like a soothing balm on the maelstrom of emotions twisting through the small room. The words spilling from Orihime's mouth were unintelligible through her tears, but Grimmjow nevertheless raised his massive black forepaw to wrap around the girl's back, drawing her closer into his embrace. His backside came to rest on the floor with a soft thump. The tip of his impossibly long whip-like tail patted the ground in contentment, and she felt what sounded like a rumbling purr erupt from his chest.

After a few minutes like that, she was finally able to form a whole sentence.

"Thank you," she told the Hollow desperately.

He said nothing in reply, but after a moment his long foreleg tightened around her, securing his embrace.

The absolution of the moment finally brought Orihime's tears to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the end.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at dwipdefeatyou.


	29. Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's better to have loved and lost and _found_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured if Shonen Jump can force Kubo-sensei to finish the manga then I *guess* I could be bothered to update. (oh my God you guys I'm sorry again)

Grimmjow was not very talkative as an Adjuchas, and Orihime wondered if it could be attributed to his less-evolved state. Surely, he must have had some catching up to do.

After some time, the lights to the apartment came back on. She took a moment to really  _look_  at the Hollow in her living room, and she was hard-pressed to hide a single emotion from his observant eyes. He was remarkable, she thought with wonder. She noted how he was the first Hollow she had ever seen that looked so very like a real-world animal and not the grotesque mishmash of monsters that most Hollows were. She commented as much, and true to his character, he merely sneered. The teeth lining his jaw were enormous, like a row of dangerous knives.

Some time passed after her initial exploration of his form, and he allowed her curiosity with a patience borne of long separation. She eventually settled for idleness while a million thoughts continued to swirl in her head.

"Why did you take so long to come see me?" she asked him after a while. She had pushed the small table in the room up against the wall, making space for him to curl up in its center. Orihime rested against his side as she sipped at her hot tea. She stared into its tinted depths instead of facing him when she asked the question, afraid of the answer. "I thought you were dead," she added in a small voice.  _I thought I had killed you._

His sides never moved, and the thought crossed her mind again, as it had many times before, that the dead needn't breathe. It was not as morbid a musing as it tended to be before when she thought it, happy as she was to simply have Grimmjow back in her life. She smiled a little despite herself, then quelled the emotion before he could ask her what her problem was. Then he answered her question.

"I wasn't powerful enough to create a _Garganta_  at will anymore," he offered. A regular  _Garganta_  could have left him anywhere on the planet, he knew, and he wouldn't risk that when he knew exactly where he needed to be to find her. He needed to wait for his strength to build as he continued back on the long, tired road to evolution.

"I'm sorry," Orihime apologized. At his confused look, she clarified. "If I hadn't destroyed the Hougyoku, then you wouldn't have regressed," she said, her voice heavy with guilt.

He snorted. "I wasn't getting any stronger the way that I was. You did me a favor."

A million thoughts swirled through the girl's head, her imagination warring with her better sense as she tried to prioritize the many questions she wanted to ask him.  _How have you been?_ warred with  _Why are you here?_ and  _Do you hate me?_ until one question finally won the battle of curiosity.

"How long until you'll be back to normal?" Her question was met with a sidelong glance by the enormous panther, and she could swear the man-beast was actually  _smirking_. She wondered what gutter he planned on taking the question before he responded.

"Eager, are we?" he said suggestively. She sputtered.

"Well, yeah! I mean, I am, but not like  _that_. I mean, not that  _that_  would be terrible, but  _that's not what I meant,_ darn it!" she rushed at the end, her cheeks flaring to life in an expressive way she hadn't experienced since she thought he'd met his demise a year and a half ago. She felt more than heard the rumble of his laughter through the armor at her back, and she batted playfully at his side to express her distress. He just loved embarrassing her, and it seemed that hadn't changed no matter what form he took. The letch.

He sobered more quickly than she, and he took the opportunity to answer. "I'm close. I can feel it. I didn't reach Vasto Lorde before Aizen and the Hougyoku's interference, but something about this time feels different." She knew he was right; his  _reiatsu_  was massive, and there was something dangerously anticipatory about what she felt there. She'd never felt this kind of power from any other Adjuchas, and she'd encountered quite a few in her time. She recalled Bawabawa and their other allies from the fateful battle in Hueco Mundo. "I need one final boost, though. To get to that point. And I don't know what it is."

She shifted to turn and face him more fully. His ears were pinned back as he glared at a spot on the floor beneath them, as if it could answer his questions. He looked positively flummoxed, and she felt the stirrings of pity blossom in her chest. She couldn't imagine what it must be like to have had the kind of power he did as an Espada, only to be back at square one again.

She raised a hand and tentatively rested it behind one black ear, petting lightly at the dark fur there. Initially, Orihime felt his entire body tense up beneath her ministrations, rock-hard and unyielding. She saw his frightening gaze rest on her from the corner of his eye, curious and mistrusting. She ignored the threatening expression, though, and continued to play with the fur there, her eyes soft. Warmth blossomed in her chest when she saw his eyes shut softly and his entire body begin to melt. His head tilted slightly toward her, and her actions became bolder at his positive response. She scratched him lightly, digging her nails past the course outer coat and into the soft fur beneath. She was glad that there were parts of him that weren't covered in the white, bony armor.

"You'll get there. I know it." Her empty encouragement brought him a measure of happiness, nevertheless, and he leaned his muzzle into her attentions, sniffing her palm lightly and tickling her with brittle whiskers. "And I'll have the sewing club make you a nicer outfit when you do. In celebration!" True to her character, she segued brilliantly, sending his head spinning as the conversation topic changed. She gushed endlessly about thread count and color, lapels and double-breasted buttons. Playing along with her game, he finally drew the line.

"No. No capes." Her crestfallen expression lasted only a moment before she diverted her attention again.

"Let me come back with you. I can help you." He looked at her with some shock, the suggestion catching him off-guard.

"What in the world do you think you can do for me?"

"I can help you fight!" She ignored his loud snort. "And I can protect you, and heal you if you ever get too injured. And I can help you make more allies again! I'll bet you lost track of all the friends we made back then." The guilty look flit across his features for just a moment, but it was enough to reaffirm her theory. As stoic as his face remained, his expressive ears spoke novels.

"I  _want_  to go back with you, Grimmjow," she said again, softly. He turned to look at her once more, concern slowly seeping into his features.

" _Why_?"

The simple question held so much depth, and Orihime knew that no singular answer could fully explain her need. It was little more than a year ago when it was all she could do to escape from her own personal Hell there in Hueco Mundo.

_Now she wants to go back?_

His unusual eyes scanned the top of her auburn hair, realizing that she was avoiding his gaze and wishing he could see into her mind.

A year and a half had passed since he'd awoken in the sand, frightened and disoriented and keen to obey his instincts that screamed at him to escape the threats that were all around. Scrambling to his feet, his paws launched him from the sand just as an immense blast - no different from that of a massive bomb detonating - boosted his escape.

Moments later, he heard a high scream rip across the desert sands, and his insides twisted in a way he couldn't explain away. For a second he nearly turned back, fighting his fearful instincts to listen to the shadow of a heart that demanded his attention.

His fright won out in the end, and he bounded past the armies of Hollows to the relative safety of the nighttime deserts beyond.

That scream echoed in his amnesiac mind for many months later until finally, one day, he remembered her name.

_Orihime_.

And then the panic set in, washing over him like a series of tidal waves, despair wringing his broken soul so thoroughly that he almost forgot he was in the midst of a meal. The blood from his latest hunt dripped from his maw as he stared ahead at nothing in shock, memories of the little human girl that came to mean everything to him flooding in.

He'd left her. He promised he'd protect her, then things didn't go according to plan and he'd  _forgotten_  her so easily and he  _hated himself so much_.

He had to find her.

His ambitions returned to him, as well. With time and with every new Hollow he consumed he remembered himself. This time, though, his priorities were different; he still wanted to grow in power, and he still wanted to become King, but...

He needed to find Orihime.

So he continued to hunt. With his kills came the power to control his  _Garganta_ , and the growth that hinted at more potential than he ever could have imagined. He was so much stronger than he had been before Aizen had used the Hougyoku on him, and he wondered what had changed this time.

He suspected he knew the answer, he thought as he returned to himself here, laying in Orihime's living room with her curled up into his side as if it were the most natural place to be.

Orihime flinched sweetly when she felt him sniffle at her neck under her ear, giggling as his whiskers tickled at the sensitive skin there.

As Grimmjow felt her breathing even out as sleep overtook her, he closed his eyes, his instincts telling him that he was safe…

…and he was  _home_.

Yes, he knew  _exactly_  what had changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not the end.
> 
> On another note, let's all put down our torches and pitchforks and use Bleach's crummy ending to create a veritable _shitton_ of outstanding fanworks. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally on board the ships that sailed and the HOLY SHIT adorable babies, but I checked the thesaurus for "lack of closure" and it got back to me with "Bleach". ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	30. Radioactive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His goal might be the same, but his motivations sure have changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got you guys a present since I made you wait so long for the last one.

For the next several months, Grimmjow traveled back and forth between their worlds. His appearances were discreet, for he had no intention of alerting the Shinigami to his movements.

Some days, he was waiting for her when she came through the door after a day of school, her bag heavy with books and the _Garganta_ wide at his back. Those days, he brought the girl back to Hueco Mundo with him upon her insistence and against his better judgment.

Her scent was bright, he marveled, and he thought wonderingly if it was indeed possible that it was him bringing her such happiness. She clearly loved the adventure that his routine spiriting away of her brought, but he realized he had never seen such an abandonment of worry in her as she showed now.

This was not like their time together before in his world. She was no prisoner, no escapee, and no reluctant warrior facing immeasurable odds. She was free, and more than happy to voluntarily be in his ornery company, he thought with some amusement. Their time together was nothing like before, and Grimmjow thought cautiously that he liked the change in dynamic very much.

He argued with her often, and she playfully challenged him every time. He would mock her weakness, clearly not believing his own words but enjoying the color that rose to her cheeks in her indignation. She was a goddess to the creatures here, after all, so she shouldn't take his prodding too seriously. She, in turn, would ask him all kinds of asinine questions that drove him wild with amusement. He wondered if there was a method to her madness, and believed there might very well be when her seemingly directionless questioning would leave her contemplative about him and his circumstances by the end of the day.

One night, he watched her face as she sat curled up next to a fire, the dark desert surrounding them in its vastness. The dancing flames painted living artwork on her thoughtful expression. His ears were perked in interest as he asked her what was on her mind.

"You look like it's painful to think that hard or something," he teased. She rolled her eyes and ignored his comment, pulling her thick blanket tighter over her shoulders and gazing back into the fire.

"Do you like the ocean, Grimmjow?" she asked. Used to the characteristic randomness of her questions, the Adjuchas did not bat an eye before contemplating his answer.

"There's not exactly much ocean to like here in Hueco Mundo." He cocked his head to the side as she turned from the flames to look at him. He averted his gaze to stare out into the darkness that her human eyes could not pierce. His answer was spoken softly. "But yeah, I guess I like what I remember of it." Memories, like morning fog from the depths of his broken soul, floated around his mind with the faint echoes of lapping waves and the smell of salty foam. The small smile that crossed her face made him wonder how she was filing that information away. She shivered under the blanket and curled up tighter beneath it.

Her head popped up slightly in surprise when she felt his enormous presence behind her; Orihime hadn't even heard him stand. When he curled around her, she leaned into his side reflexively, now exceedingly comfortable with the evening setup they seemed to default to more often than not. Her eyes grew heavy almost immediately, and her breathing began to even out.

"Goodnight, Grimmjow," she murmured happily.

He said nothing in reply as he watched her fall asleep.

She got prettier in the time they'd been apart, he thought to himself guardedly while he observed her sleeping face. Her hair was fuller, falling in soft waves all around her. He often woke to it tickling his nose, his subconscious seeking out the comforting scent when he would doze off unnecessarily. He did that more often now that she was here. Her long lashes fanned across her round cheeks, tinted rose by her proximity to the small campfire. Her lips parted just barely as she breathed sleepily.

His ears flattened against his skull as he wished, not for the first time, that he could be rid of this form.

He had more than one reason to strive toward his transformation.

Grimmjow huffed deeply, and the orange flames pranced away from the gust.

He'd better change, and soon, he thought as he braced himself to stand vigil for the rest of the night.

That chance would come sooner than he had realized.

Days later, only mere hours before Orihime planned to return home again for a time, the pair was attacked as they cautiously trekked through a barren canyon.

The Adjuchas before them was massive, much larger than most Hollows of that class ever were.

Despite his size, he was largely on-par with Grimmjow strength-wise, and the two monsters were locked in an evenly matched showdown.

Grimmjow placed some distance between himself and the vaguely apelike Hollow, its massive arms pounding the ground where the panther had once been. When it struck nothing but empty space, the creature swung its giant tusks around wildly, bellowing as it searched in a wide circle for where the swift feline had run to.

Orihime had watched Grimmjow dominate many battles now, rarely having had to intervene for his protection. Still, this particular challenger had her biting her nails on the sidelines, particularly as she watched the bladed scorpion tail arch behind the opponent, ready to strike like venomous lightning. She found herself always paying extra attention to opponents with tails after her own ambush years ago.

Her partner in question was stalking the other Adjuchas, circling him from outside of striking range. From this distance, Orihime could see Grimmjow's eyes eerily reflect back the golden glow of her shield, the glimmer of his nocturnal retinas shimmering green as they observed.

In the dim lighting, she could barely make out the way his black ears flicked back and forth, and she wondered at the hint of his distraction. When she took the moment to scan her surroundings, she realized what he could already sense.

Hollows of all shapes and sizes were surrounding them, focused intently on the battle being waged within the rocky canyon. She gasped softly, her nerves like ice in her stomach and a coil around her throat. _What… what's going on?_ she wondered in shock.

Then, with a sound like gunfire at the start of a race, Grimmjow lunged again, covering the distance between the two Hollows in three enormous bounds before he leapt atop the other monster. The ape met him with his muscular arms raised and his jaws practically unhinged as they released a deafening roar of challenge.

Time slowed for Orihime as she watched Grimmjow fly through the air at the other beast, lips curled over his enormous fangs and black claws extended from huge paws spread like fans. His tail whipped behind him, circling wildly to perfectly balance his inertia.

Grimmjow's opponent never stood a chance.

Like the felling of an ancient tree, the apelike Adjuchas toppled over to the ground, its impact shaking rocks loose from the cliffsides and sending the menagerie of observing Hollows wild with bloodlust. The cacophony they created was distracting, but Orihime's eyes remained fixed on her partner within the thin cloud of dust.

As it settled, her eyes landed on the fatal blow, the hunk of flesh missing from the opponent's throat and dripping crimson from Grimmjow's maw. His head was low as he dug into his prize, all the while eyeing their audience in case they got the bright idea to attack his human.

When he swallowed the first piece, Orihime's cry was drowned out as he was quite literally struck by lightning.

When the spots of color cleared from her momentarily blinded vision, the body of the defeated Hollow had simply vanished, and Grimmjow stood alone on his four paws there on the canyon floor. He looked tense and in pain, as if the electrocution had caused all of his muscles to contract involuntarily.

A storm churned all around the panther, and when she saw the coiled flesh beneath his hardened skin begin to loosen again his  _reiatsu_  exploded in massive pulsing waves, like the slow beat of a giant drum shaking Orihime to her core. She held her hair from her face as best she could as it whipped all around in the winds. Her heart twisted like a wet dishtowel wringing in nervous hands, and her eyes watered from the combination of the tempest and her own emotions.

She knew exactly what was happening.

His power was all she could feel. It was colossal and overwhelming, like nothing she had ever sensed from a Hollow before. She could  _see_ it swirling all around him, hear the roar of his spirit wash over the entire desert around them. She could feel it on her skin, but unlike the cowering Menos nearby, she could embrace it. This was Grimmjow, after all, and no matter what form he took, he would be  _her_ Grimmjow, she thought somewhat possessively.

She couldn't help but realize how much she loved the feel of his very soul all around her. It was tremendously intimate, she thought calmly, her eyes sparkling as it took in the supernatural iridescent glow. While it may have terrified the other Hollows, it felt like a warm security blanket to her, a cool fire whose flames licked her gently. She lowered her hands and wrapped them around her arms, hugging herself as she watched his transformation take place.

Then, quite suddenly, all noise stopped, and the winds died. There, in the middle of what was once a tiny cyclone was a brightly glowing form, smaller than the Adjuchas she remembered, and crouched low to the ground. The Hollows around her shifted nervously, like skittish horses in a barn. The figure glowed so intensely that any details were impossible to make out.

Unexpectedly, an immobilizing noise – like a crack of thunder combined with the roar of a wild animal – exploded from the form as the glow shattered like glass to reveal the new body within.

Orihime did not notice the many Hollows who turned tail to run. She did not see the even more individuals who immediately prostrated themselves, bowing to the newest of their brethren to join the elusive rank of Vasto Lorde, more of a legend than a realistic ambition for most of them. He was a myth come to life in Hueco Mundo.

When she heard the low and animalistic growl come from him, she felt her flesh tingle with goosebumps and her hair rise on her arms.

Then, from a distance, she saw his familiar blue eyes open. They took a moment to examine the new form his limbs took, curiously roving the claw-tipped fingers and the backs of strong forearms wrapped in pliant black armor, like long gloves. They ended at his elbows, which were tipped with wicked backswept blades, much like his  _resurrección_  had once had. His biceps were wrapped in tan flesh, tight against the muscles there. Atop both his shoulders sat narrow layered plates of bony armor, like primal epaulets. His sides were wrapped in thick, rib-like bones that started from the spinal cord that protruded from the center of his back, just as it had done in his Adjuchas and  _resurrección_  forms. It was hard to tell whether they lay atop his skin or were embedded beneath, and Orihime was presented with the same conundrum she encountered with the jawbone fragment that adorned his face once-upon-a-time.

Wild black fur blossomed from his collarbone and up around his neck, the remnant of the small mane he had as an Adjuchas. It tapered halfway down his sternum, ending in a point that directed the eyes to the hole in the middle of his stomach, smaller than Orihime had ever seen it. A bony plate seemed to spill from the bottom of that hole, and along with a series of claw-like bones that circled low on his hips it held up a pair of light, white harem pants that tied shut just below his knees. From his calves down, his long legs were covered in more of the short black fur she remembered, and his feet retained the shape of feline paws.

His mask was like the faceplate of a Grecian battle helmet, keeping both a version of his crown of bone and curving downwards to frame both cheeks, encasing his jaw halfway to his chin in bone and fang. The colorful markings under his eyes were back, sweeping under the bone and painting his short pointed ears with bright fur. His shock of blue hair swept up and forward, more reminiscent of his unreleased appearance as an Espada, though perhaps a smidgen longer.

When he was done with his self-examination, his gaze rose to sweep his surroundings. She felt a flutter in her stomach when it pinned her first, ignoring the other Hollows paying their respects. She could not control the way her eyes filled with happiness, and she bit her lip to contain the likely outburst of emotions. No one ever accused her of having a good game face.

Orihime did not seem to notice as he stood tall on two legs to walk toward her slowly, eyes never leaving contact as he practically unfurled into his new form. She fleetingly caught sight of a long tail whipping freely behind him, shaking out the intensity of his transformation.

The next thing she knew, he was standing before her, slightly within her personal bubble, looking down at her with narrowed eyes full of blue.

A black clawed hand raised to her cheek, humanlike but for the dangerous sharpened tips. When it met her face, she leaned into it softly, smiling shakily at his unchanging expression.

His blue eyes searched her face intently, and Orihime wondered what it was he was looking so hard for. She wondered hesitatingly if he even recognized her, and for a moment her nerves fought for dominance with the rest of her emotions. He inched closer, and the young woman held her breath at his proximity. His body was close, their fronts nearly touching. Her eyes wandered up and down his face, hoping he still knew her.

They shut softly when his nose nudged her own gently, and she felt his head tilt slightly.

When his lips touched hers, she noticed with a flutter that they were warm. Feather soft at first, he seemed to be relishing the sensation of his skin on hers. She tingled where they made contact.

With every fleeting caress, though, his urgency increased. He began to abandon his cautious exploration as he was overcome by his eagerness, and she welcomed the infusion of passion. She felt more than ordered her hands to tentatively slide up his sides, feeling the hard muscle there between the cold bones. He growled at the action and scooped her closer to him, and she couldn't help the giddy smile that broke across her face as he kissed her senseless. She even felt him return the grin for a moment, the tickle of sharp canines momentarily nipping at her lip.

When she backed away slightly, his claws tangled in her long hair while he gazed down questioningly at her swollen lips and flushed cheeks, she looked up adoringly into his eyes.

"Welcome back, your highness."

And for the first time, he spoke as a Vasto Lorde.

"Hmm. The pleasure is all mine, Princess," he growled.

And when she blushed prettily, he could do nothing but chuckle and hold her tighter before turning to his vast constituency and finally beginning his reign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the end.
> 
> There was once a super GrimmHime titled _Nine Tales_ that pretty much fulfilled all of my Grimmjow backstory headcanons. Unfortunately it has since disappeared from the internet, but have fun with the various Easter Eggs throughout this fic for those of you who have had the pleasure of reading it.
> 
> Also, I know I sounded a little bitter about the end of the manga in the last chapter. While I wasn't particularly pleased with how abruptly it finished, I do want to thank Kubo-sensei for creating such a wonderful story and keeping it going for fifteen years. He created such a wonderful cast of characters that lit up my imagination, kept me going through difficult times, and even inspired quite a bit of creativity from me! Thank you Kubo-sensei!

**Author's Note:**

> Baptizing my AO3 account by importing my pride and joy, "Coronado". Special hellos to readers from FF.net; note that what I post here will have seen some scrubbing. Always improving!


End file.
